Abstract:
Project Canary recently completed the fourth round of field testing at Colorado State University’s Methane Emissions Technology Evaluation Center (METEC). This study included 349 experiments consisting of controlled vent emissions and fugitive emissions from up to five (5) emission sources simultaneously. After the testing, the Test Center and Project Canary performed a detailed comparative investigation which revealed three practical aspects of Project Canary’s system. Project Canary’s analysis of the study shows that 94% of the controlled releases were detected by the Project Canary CM Monitoring and data analysis system with zero erroneous off-site detections. This study also indicates that the minimum detectable emission rate for the Project Canary system is 0.091 kgCH4/hr. Additionally, 90% of leaks larger than 0.5kgCH4/hr are detectable. It was also found that detection and alert notification time ranged from a few seconds to 19 minutes.