Capterio and bp present at Methane Event hosted by Institute of Chemical Engineers and Queen Mary University

Capterio’s CEO (Mark Davis) was delighted to join bp’s methane expert (Peter Evans) and Queen Mary University’s Senior Lecturer (Dr Paul Balcombe) at a seminar organised jointly by the Queen Mary University of London and the Institute of Chemical Engineers earlier this week. The event was attended by a range of leading experts, industry partners, academics and students.

Dr Balcombe presented an overview of the global challenge of methane emissions and highlighted some of his ground-breaking research on emissions of methane from LNG vessels and from biogas digesters. Peter Evans presented the insights from bp’s measurement and monitoring campaign on gas turbines and Dr Davis presented his global overview of the challenge and opportunities resulting from the measurements of – and solutions for – gas flaring.

Whilst each presentation focussed on a different sector and detail of the methane challenge, there were some very clear common threads, including:

• Measurement is the key to driving action – and in doing so many operational improvement insights inevitably result.
  
• The topic of “methane slip” – i.e. gas emitted unintentionally during incomplete combustion – is key to solve – whether in a gas turbine, a ship propulsion engine, or a gas flare. In many cases “standard emissions factor” approaches (which are often based on generalised empirical assumptions) are unlikely to represent reality.
  
• Equipment (or countries, in the flaring case) often demonstrate a wide “span of performance” between the best and the worst operations. Very promisingly, small “tweaks” to operational practices can deliver big reductions in emissions often without significant cost.

Thank you to Dr Paul Balcombe for organising the event!