Tackling the Methane Quandary: Curbing Emissions from Control Valves

In the wake of Eni's strategy to curb fugitive emissions - in particular methane – an innovative control valve (Clarke Shutter Valve) has been deployed and tested in an Italian Eni facility. This shutter type valve is capable of reducing the fugitive emissions by more than 90%, as well as greatly curbing purchase costs, thanks to an innovative design in bonnet and regulating mechanism. In order to assess the real potentiality of the innovation, four Fisher globe valves and one Fisher V-ball were substituted with the Shutter Valves on different hydrocarbon streams of the Trecate facility (Piedmont), in particular on streams containing oil, gas and corrosive fluids. The valves were monitored for more than a year and fugitive emissions tests have been performed to detect and estimate methane leak rates. Since this represented a first deployment of this technology in Europe, a thorough analysis and technology validation of the valves has been performed. A successful installation and start-up were performed in 3 days by Eni's staff at in February of 2020. The valves were fully operational after the installation and to date no issues have been reported. In order to monitor the valves performances of flow control, continuous data collection on each valve has been implemented, and the analysis performed showed that all valves behave correctly as to Eni's standards. A fugitive emission test that has been performed at the end of 2020 with a certified portable FID/PID analyzer displayed that no methane emissions were detected from the valves. Lastly the one year and half long technology validation concluded that the Shutter Valves are a valid technology for curbing methane emissions from the Oil and Gas plants, and that suggested to qualify the company as Eni partner for control valves. This deployment and field tests, as well as the technological assessment performed by Eni's professionals showed the potentiality of this new type of valves in reducing the methane emissions from the petroleum industry. Understanding the potentiality of intrinsically carbon neutral technology is a crucial step for the mitigation of greenhouse gases emissions and towards the creation of a more environmentally friendly industry.

Guest Editorial: The Engineering Approach to Carbon-Emissions Management

Every engineer and manager knows that you can only improve performance that you measure and track. That is why we have key performance indicators (KPIs). Similarly, we can only optimize what we can predict. If we really want to lower carbon emissions, we will need to implement a consistent method of measuring and tracking the right data. There are challenges in improving what we track because tracking comes from so many sources. We need to work on optimizing what we predict if we are going to start making high-value decisions around emissions. Carbon emissions occur during all phases of the hydrocarbon extraction industry right through to the final use of the product. We call the total life cycle of emissions “well to wheels.” SPE members are generally focused on one phase of the carbon emissions. The largest contribution is the combustion and use of produced oil, from refinery to wheels. This is typically about 350–400 kg of CO2 equivalent per barrel. We use CO2 equivalent to include the greenhouse-gas (GHG) impact of methane. Then, there is the energy and carbon expenditure of producing that hydrocarbon, well to refinery. This includes drilling, completions, production, and transportation. Carbon emissions from the wells to refinery vary from less than 25 kg to more than 300 kg CO2 equivalent per barrel, aver-aging about 100. Flaring and fugitive emissions are generally the largest contributors to these emissions. Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) activism is driving changes in behavior for public investors, private investors, lenders, and management teams. When will the measuring be done? Who will set the industry standards? How will the model be developed? Carbon emissions from shale production vary dramatically and are also driven by flaring and fugitives. While flaring is preferable to venting, most low-volume flares are inefficient. Operators flare for a variety of reasons including lack of pipeline capacity, upsets, and low value for natural gas. Fugitive emissions also enter the equation. Fugitive emissions are any leakage or irregular release to the atmosphere of natural gas. This can be caused by human error, mechanical operations (such as pneumatic actuators), or faulty equipment. Fugitive emissions and flaring both factor into the well-to-reservoir carbon footprint. Many operators already report the carbon intensity of their activities, usually prior-year activities. Carbon intensity is the carbon emissions per unit of energy or per barrel. A variety of regulatory bodies and others argue the definitions of such reporting. We are arguing for reporting estimated carbon intensity of reserves.

Methane Oxidation Biosystem In Landfill Fugitive Emissions Using Conventional Cover Soil And Compost As Alternative Substrate – A Field Study

Landfill is an important anthropogenic source of greenhouse gases (GHG). Aiming at methane mitigation through the use of a cover layer in the form of fugitive emissions, this study investigated the methane passive bioxidation in a Brazilian landfill in biofilters under two conditions: control column (packing material using a 60 cm landfill cover soil with ≅0.8% organic matter) and enriched column (packing material using 45 cm landfill cover soil and 15 cm mixture of cover soil plus compost with ≅6% organic matter). The biogas was collected from a vertical drain pipe of a four-year-old cell and injected into the base of the columns with a high inlet loading (1000 g CH4 .m - ².d - ¹ at standard temperature and pressure conditions) in the upward flow mode. Ten campaigns were carried out for six months in order to determine the efficiency of the methane oxidation in each column. Parameters related to the biogas oxidation were also determined, such as soil temperature and moisture content and nutrients content in both filter beds. The oxidation global efficiencies were higher in the enriched column throughout all campaigns, with »71 and »95% for the control and enriched columns, respectively. Our study demonstrated that the use of substrates with high organic matter content and low cost (such as the compost) in landfill cover layers might present high efficacy in the reduction of methane fugitive emissions. Landfill is an important anthropogenic source of greenhouse gases (GHG). Aiming at methane mitigation through the use of a cover layer in the form of fugitive emissions, this study investigated the methane passive bio-oxidation in a Brazilian landfill in biofilters under two conditions: control column (packing material using only landfill cover soil with ≅0.8% organic matter) and enriched column (packing material using 45 cm landfill cover soil and 15 cm mixture of cover soil plus compost with ≅6% organic matter). Biogas was collected from a vertical drain pipe of a four-year-old cell and injected into the base of the columns with a high inlet loading (1000 gCH4.m-².d-¹) in upward flow mode. Ten campaigns were carried out for six months in order to determine the efficiency of the methane oxidation in each column. Soil temperature, moisture and nutrients content in both filter beds were also determined. The oxidation global efficiencies were higher in the enriched column throughout all campaigns, with »71 and »95% for the control and enriched columns, respectively, demonstrating that this technology can be applied even in landfills where there is no energy recovery from biogas (as in most landfills in developing countries). Our study demonstrated that the use of substrates with high organic matter content and low cost in landfill cover layers might present high efficacy in the reduction of methane fugitive emissions. Even operating in field-scale conditions, the results of this study were comparable to those obtained with biofilters on lab-scale (under controlled operational conditions).

A Deep Look into the Microbiology and Chemistry of Froth Treatment Tailings: A Review

In Alberta’s Athabasca oil sands region (AOSR), over 1.25 billion m3 of tailings waste from the bitumen extraction process are stored in tailings ponds. Fugitive emissions associated with residual hydrocarbons in tailings ponds pose an environmental concern and include greenhouse gases (GHGs), reduced sulphur compounds (RSCs), and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Froth treatment tailings (FTT) are a specific type of tailings waste stream from the bitumen froth treatment process that contains bioavailable diluent: either naphtha or paraffins. Tailings ponds that receive FTT are associated with the highest levels of biogenic gas production, as diverse microbial communities biodegrade the residual diluent. In this review, current literature regarding the composition, chemical analysis, and microbial degradation of FTT and its constituents is presented in order to provide a more complete understanding of the complex chemistry and biological processes related to fugitive emissions from tailings ponds receiving FTT. Characterizing the composition and biodegradation of FTT is important from an environmental perspective to better predict emissions from tailings ponds and guide tailings pond management decisions.

High resolution seasonal and decadal inventory of anthropic gas-phase and particle emissions for Argentina

This work presents the integration of a gas-phase and particulate atmospheric emission inventory (AEI) for Argentina in high spatial resolution (0.025° × 0.025°; approx. 2.5 km × 2.5 km) considering monthly variability from 1995 to 2020. The new inventory, called GEAA-AEIv3.0M, includes the following activities: energy production, fugitive emissions from oil and gas production, industrial fuel consumption and production, transport -road, maritime and air-, agriculture, livestock production, manufacturing, residential, commercial and biomass + agricultural-waste burning. The following species, grouped by atmospheric reactivity, are considered: i) Greenhouse Gases (GHG): CO2, CH4 and N2O; ii) Ozone Precursors: CO, NOx (NO + NO2) and Non-Methane Volatile Organic Compounds (NMVOC); iii) Acidifying Gases: NH3 and SO2; and iv) Particulate Matter (PM): PM10, PM2.5, Total Suspended Particle (TSP) and Black-Carbon (BC). The main objective of the GEAA-AEIv3.0M high-resolution emission inventory is to provide temporal resolved emission maps to support air quality and climate modeling oriented to evaluate pollutant mitigation strategies by local governments. This is of major concern especially in countries where air quality monitoring networks are scarce, and the development of regional and seasonal emissions inventories would result in remarkable improvements in the time + space chemical prediction achieved by air quality models. Despite distinguishing among different sectoral and activity databases as well as introducing a novel spatial distribution approach based on census radii, our high-resolution GEAA-AEIv3.0M show equivalent national-wide total emissions compared to the Third National Communication of Argentina (TNCA), which compiles annual GHG emissions from 1990 through 2014 (agreement within ±4 %). However, the GEAA-AEIv3.0M includes acidifying gases and PM species not considered in TNCA. Spatial and temporal comparisons were also performed against EDGAR HTAPv5.0 inventory for several pollutants. The agreement was acceptable within less than 30 % for most of the pollutants and activities, although a > 90 % discrepancy was obtained for methane from fuel production and fugitive emissions and > 120 % for biomass burning. Finally, the updated seasonal series clearly showed the pollution reduction due to the COVID-19 lockdown during the first quarter of year 2020 with respect to same months in previous years. Through an open access data repository, we present the GEAA-AEIv3.0M inventory, as the largest and more detailed spatial resolution dataset for the Argentine Republic, which includes monthly gridded emissions for 12 species and 15 sectors between 1995 and 2020. The datasets are available at http://dx.doi.org/10.17632/d6xrhpmzdp.1, under a CC-BY 4 license (Puliafito et al., 2021).