Education  January 27, 2017

Engineers at CU Boulder to track gas leaks using lasers

BOULDER — A team of researchers led by the University of Colorado Boulder has secured a $1.3 million grant from the Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy to use lasers to detect and monitor emissions from natural-gas storage facilities across the United States.
The CU Boulder researchers will team up with scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST, in Boulder, the University of California Davis and Boulder-based aircraft operator Scientific Aviation to measure emissions.
The teams will use a ground-based laser system based on Nobel-prize-winning technology invented at CU and NIST.
The laser system measures changes in methane concentrations in the air down to one part-per-billion, the equivalent of a single drop of water in an Olympic-size swimming pool.
The information will be used to better understand how emissions of methane come out of the ground, equipment and abandoned well heads around storage facilities, and whether these emissions are steady through time or vary.
“This is an incredible opportunity to bring together cutting-edge technologies and researchers to answer an important, practical question,” said Greg Rieker, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at CU Boulder and the principal investigator of the study. “We aim to produce results that will enable sound policy decisions and business practices that keep everyone safe, and keep natural gas in the ground until we’re ready to use it.”

BOULDER — A team of researchers led by the University of Colorado Boulder has secured a $1.3 million grant from the Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy to use lasers to detect and monitor emissions from natural-gas storage facilities across the United States.
The CU Boulder researchers will team up with scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST, in Boulder, the University of California Davis and Boulder-based aircraft operator Scientific Aviation to measure emissions.
The teams will use a ground-based laser system based on Nobel-prize-winning…

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