Analysis of the gas flare flame with IR cameras

摘要

Greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activities remain one of the most important subjects of international discussions. The routine gas flaring has been estimated to be responsible for as much as 1% of global carbon dioxide emission per year. Gas flaring analysis is one of the key-interest subjects in remote sensing community. Some of the existing publications use remote sensing techniques with satellite imagery to derive information about flame temperature and further about to estimate the volume of the flared gas. The often missing element is an in-situ measurement analysis of gas flames, combining signals recorded by a camera on-ground and data on flared gas volume, temperature and gas type. In order to address this problem, an experiment was conducted, in which the gas flame was recorded by thermal cameras on-ground, simultaneously to an aerial survey and the gas flow was measured at the same time on-ground. The measurement setup was designed in cooperation between Institute of Optical Sensor Systems of German Aerospace Center (DLR) and German Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM). Cameras recording in thermal and mid-wave IR wavelengths were used to record the burning gas on-ground and from the aerial survey. All the measurements have been compared and statistically analysed with respect to the recorded temperature. The purpose of the examination was to describe the signal changes in thermal imagery with respect to changes in energy, emitted by the burning process. This approach will allow for later calculation of the amount of energy in form of thermal radiation sent from the flame to the satellite.