Sep 7 2013
Synodon Inc. ("Synodon") announces that its realSens™ technology successfully demonstrated its ability to detect hydrocarbon vapour plumes released from crude oil samples provided by one of its customers.
These results build on the previously announced pentane, condensate and gasoline detection tests performed and announced over the last year and represent the final phase in demonstrating the ability of realSens™ at detecting leaks from virtually all types of liquid hydrocarbons. Full reports for these tests are available upon request and will also be presented at upcoming industry technical conferences.
For the demonstration, a Western Canadian light sweet synthetic crude (OSA) sample was used which contains one of the lowest percentages (about 5%) of volatiles when compared to other World crudes. The typical analysis, available on www.crudemonitor.ca, lists butanes (C4) at 1.33%, pentanes (C5) at 2.11% and hexanes (C6, a smaller contributor to vapours) at 2.33%.
Vapour plumes were released from a custom evaporator containing 20 liters of OSA at 2 different flow rates while realSens™ passed over the leak area. The vapour flow rates were chosen to be below and above the previously derived detection threshold (0.035 litres per minute). The subsequent data analysis showed that the plumes were detected with 95% reliability for vapour rates between 0.04 to 0.06 litres per minute.
In a practical open pool evaporation setting, this vapour rate would correspond to a crude oil leak of between 5 to 10 barrels per day, or <0.005% of the flow in a medium sized 200,000 bpd pipeline. This is a significantly smaller (over 100 times) release rate than the typical 1% that can be achieved by current pipeline monitoring technologies. The detectable leak size will be even smaller for products with a higher concentration of light hydrocarbons.
"This demonstration validates the ability of the realSens™ technology at detecting very small leaks from low volatility crude oil products while airborne" stated Adrian Banica, CEO of Synodon Inc. "We have now proven the effectiveness of this technology at detecting a wide variety of liquid hydrocarbon products from pure pentane to gasoline, condensates and finally crude oil. Since most of the products transported through the World's liquid pipelines are crudes, this enables Synodon to now market its services to this entire infrastructure."
Synodon Inc. is a technology company which has developed an advanced airborne remote gas sensing system called realSens™, based on technologies developed under the Canadian Space Program and by Synodon scientists. The company currently provides advanced airborne pipeline integrity management services to the oil and gas sector through a suite of services including natural gas and liquid hydrocarbon leak detection, pipeline threat assessments, and waterway crossings analysis among others.