ABB has partnered with the U.S. Department of Energy to design an integrated methane Monitoring platform that will serve as a database that will aggregate, analyze and visualize data from multiple U.S. emissions sources for the first time.
The $1 million project will continuously monitor, map, locate and quantify methane emissions throughout the U.S. natural gas supply chain and infrastructure.
The integrated platform will help the United States significantly reduce methane emissions, associated pollution and waste generation, and achieve sustainable development goals for cities, states and the country as a whole.

ABB, together with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management and the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), will design an integrated methane monitoring platform to drive the development of innovative methane measurement, monitoring and mitigation technologies in the United States. The total value of the project is $1 million.

Visualization of data from the drone, showing methane leaks

Current methane emissions are recorded by academic researchers, industry, and technology providers using many different methods, on different spatial and time scales. The data produced by various methods have very different characterization and quality measures.

On the one hand, they use sensors to monitor methane emissions near natural gas production sites almost continuously, reporting results every 15 minutes, but with less accuracy; On the other hand, large-scale monitoring is conducted on a weekly or monthly basis using sensors mounted on aircraft and satellites to look for so-called “super sources of emissions.”

These data are often recorded, analyzed, and visualized separately, lacking a unified database to aggregate data from multiple emission sources.

ABB will develop detailed engineering plans for the first integrated U.S.-centric platform that will detect, quantify and ultimately help reduce methane emissions across the entire U.S. natural gas supply chain and infrastructure.

Methane survey results on the monitor

Jean-Rene Roy, global Head of the Analyzer business line at ABB Measurement & Analytics, said: “As a global leader in methane sensing technology, ABB has a significant responsibility in this area. Working with the US Department of Energy will help us break the limits of emissions monitoring. The results of this work will be tangible, significantly reducing methane emissions across the United States and helping to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.”

Timothy Reinhardt, director of the methane Division in DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management, said: “We are excited to adopt the integrated methane monitoring platform designed by ABB. This is part of the DOE’s innovative Methane Measurement, Monitoring and Emission Reduction Technology (IM4 Technology) funding program. We believe the scope of the project’s objectives is consistent with our goal of driving innovative technology development and reducing and ultimately eliminating methane emissions from hydrocarbon infrastructure.”

The illustration explains how the system takes data from sensors and other sources, aggregates it and feeds it into the cloud computing center, and then displays the information on a website accessible to stakeholders

The platform will:
• Aggregate methane emission measurements recorded by different methods and at different time and spatial scales.
Use advanced big data analytics to analyze data.
• Visualize data and present it in detail on a geospatial map.
Enable stakeholders such as industry, academia, government policymakers, and compliance entities to quickly identify and resolve issues, and quantify short – and long-term (e.g., from minutes to months) trends, as well as small – and large-scale (e.g., street to state) trends.

ABB will leverage its deep knowledge of measurement science, data source integration, digital technologies and advanced analytics to develop a comprehensive engineering, design, construction, deployment and operations plan.

The system will be able to quickly identify, locate and characterize “super sources”, intermittent sources and long-term, persistent but small sources of emissions, enabling stakeholders to quickly respond to and reduce unnecessary emissions.