Evaluation of instrument leak detection capabilities for Smart LDAR application: Chemical plant testing

To progress wider application of optical imaging technology for Smart LDAR (Leak Detection And Repair), confirmatory field test data on instrument leak detection capabilities for several chemical species were collected. During this testing, the optical imaging instrument was used to monitor over 73,000 components in 11 different chemical plant process unit areas. Twenty‐eight leaks were found using the optical imaging instrument and 16 of these leaks were bagged to quantify the mass emission rate. The monitoring team was able to check over 3,600 components per hour on average. Included in this paper are a summary of the process areas monitored with the optical imaging instrument and the times these were monitored, the approximate number of components monitored in each process area, the time for this monitoring and the corresponding rate of monitoring for each process area and for the overall test period, list of the components found leaking by the optical imaging instrument, a rough description of the chemical in the process line, the Method 21 reading, and the mass emission rate if bagging was done. A comparison to the previously published laboratory results shows that for all species tested, the detected leak rates fell within the range of the laboratory wind tunnel testing. This confirms the applicability of the wind tunnel tests as a predictive tool for evaluating optical imaging instrument performance in a process plant.