An improved system for detecting natural gas leaks

This paper presents a pattern recognition system for detecting natural gas leaks in the oil and gas industry. More precisely, the detection is done in wellheads of industry installations. In the literature, other methods have been used previously but with some drawbacks. One technique detects gas leaks measuring the CH4 concentration through the principle of catalytic combustion but suffers from reduced lifespan and a narrow detection range of sensors. Another technique that measures infrared spectrum absorption suffers from high false negative values in the presence of steam. The technique proposed in this study uses radiation in the visible range that can be captured through CCD cameras already present in Closed-Circuit Television systems used to monitor wells. The proposed method uses the novelty filter concept to detect the leak and identify the region where it occurs. The proposed technique is a pioneering study of natural gas detection with CCD in visible range. The results presented are promising, showing sensitivity and specificity of 94% and 96%, respectively.