A cautionary report of calculating methane emissions using low-cost fence-line sensors

Methane (CH4) is emitted during extraction, processing, and transport processes in the natural gas industry. As a powerful greenhouse gas, CH4 releases are harmful to the environment. Operators aim to minimize methane loss, and continuous monitoring using low-cost fence-line sensors are now being developed to observe methane enhancements downwind of operations. However, it is not clear how useful these systems are and whether they can be used to quantify emissions or simply identify the presence of a leak. To investigate this, we deployed 4 calibrated low-cost sensors 30 m from emissions of known rates over a 48-h period. The aims were to determine: (1) how much of the time a fence-line system would detect a leakage event from a single, point source of the size typically seen at oil and gas production well pads and (2) how accurately a fence-line system can estimate CH4 emissions using a relatively simple downwind dispersion method. Our results show that during a 48-h measurement period, the fence-line sensor network could detect CH4 releases of 84 g h−1 40% of the time and 100% of the time for emissions greater than 167 g h−1 using an enhancement threshold of 2 ppm. A Gaussian plume inversion based on binned centerline, maximum measured concentrations and the WindTrax Lagrangian particle model were each tested. With these models, average estimated emissions were within ±50% of a known emission rate in 24 h and ±25% in 48 h; however, estimated individual 20-min average emissions vary by more than a factor of 10. A simple Gaussian plume inversion using all of the measured concentrations produced unreasonable average emission estimates because of the inability of the equation to parameterize lateral dispersion at distances less than 100 m when the sensor was on the edge of the plume. This study provides evidence to support the use of low-cost sensors as autonomous fence-line monitoring systems to detect and potentially quantify emissions. If the sensors are properly calibrated and sensor deployment location is optimized for prevailing wind directions at each site, fence-line systems could be used routinely to quantify emissions from oil and gas infrastructure.