End to end emissions monitoring by digitalisation

Abstract

With hydrocarbon extraction and transmission networks being consumers of energy, there is high sensitivity across the industry towards carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases being emitted. These emissions need to be measured accurately and reported correctly for commercial and legislative reasons. On any facility there are multiple sources of emissions, both intended and unintended. This paper outlines an approach and technology to measure and report all known sources of emissions consistently accurately, in an auditable and transparent fashion. By calculation of each source’s carbon dioxide or carbon dioxide equivalent mass depending on the nature of the emission source, the total emissions of a site can be reported. The calculation of carbon dioxide from any single emissions source is dependent on numerous factors. For sources which consume hydrocarbons, the mass of carbon dioxide and equivalents in exhausts depends on the hydrocarbon composition, combustion mechanism and combustion efficiency and nature, and any treatments of emissions. The gathering of live process data relating to all these factors directly and indirectly is shown through the treatments described to be effective with general and specific treatments of each factor and the contributing data sources for each is described in some specific examples. The combination of these calculated emissions based on live measurement data for multiple emission sources and their totalisation by emission type, emission source, and the relation of these to other key production factors is described. The validation process of emissions calculations, the totalisations and the analysis of emissions by activity is described.