Smart Leak Detection and Repair at Q-Chem

摘要

Industrial Cities in Qatar included the requirements for fugitive emissions monitoring in their land lease agreements with industries in their individual areas. Although there are some differences in each city's guidelines, the overall requirement is for a Leak Detection and Repair (LDAR) program to be in use to ensure early response to leaks and minimization of fugitive emissions. Recently, inclusion of a LDAR program became a State of Qatar environmental requirement, although not in the executive Environmental Regulations as yet. The State authority had enforced LDAR program in some industries' consent to operate, when QChem was only required to monitor hydrocarbon tanks. Q-Chem had chosen to be in full compliance with our contractual agreement with Mesaieed Industrial City (MIC) and Ras Laffan Industrial City (RLIC) for our operated plants at these cities. For that, Q-Chem decided to build and implement a "Smart LDAR Program", incorporating the use of Infra Red Optical Gas Imaging Cameras (IR Camera) for qualitative monitoring of leaks and traditional VOC "Sniffers" for the quantitative measures of identified leakers. Moreover, this "Smart LDAR Program" is predicated on the use of P&IDs and PFDs and populating a database that lists and tracks all fugitive sources, their annual leaking values, and repair histories without physical tagging of individual sources in the field. Unlike the initial LDAR US-EPA Method 21, this Smart LDAR, which has recently been approved by US-EPA, requires much less manpower; is much faster; is less costly; has less potential for missing leakers; reduces the number of difficult to monitor (DTM) or Unsafe to monitor (UTM) sources; quickly locates the highest leaking components without having to monitor every individual piping component in the plant. ; and has > 90% of fugitive emissions come from only about 0.13% of the piping components, it is most cost effective to concentrate and direct efforts and resource towards those emitting > 500 ppm using scanning IR camera. In this paper, Q-Chem will present the information collected from facilities operated by Chevron Philips Chemicals (CPChem) and its joint ventures to develop LDAR programs and compare traditional and "Smart" programs. Additionally, this paper will outline efforts to secure RLIC and MIC consent for use of this new technology. This paper will also discuss how this Smart LDAR program had maximized emission reduction while minimizing the program cost, and getting work done faster in locating and repairing the leakers, especially that 99% of the fugitive sources do not leak appreciably and therefore do not contribute significantly to the mass emissions. Past experience in building the LDAR at Q-Chem will be shared with its positives and lessons learned as we continue building this program for all Q-Chem facilities as they are commissioned and started up.