Bessemer Society Summit and Showcase

post by Murray Reed.Last week Paul Hughes and I joined The Bessemer Society Summit and Showcase event in Bishopsgate, London, with a stand for QLM Technology giving a short pitch and meeting many leaders and supporters of cutting-edge hard-tech enterprises across the UK. How the UK can scale its nascent technology start-ups and ‘reindustrialise’ the UK, rather than just sell them off and out for foreign capital, was a major theme. As is unavoidable in UK forums the level of patriotic pissing and moaning was high, but there was a great balance of intelligent perspective and vision as well, particularly from Dame Anne Glover, Sarah Haywood , David Richards, and Stan Boland. We presented QLM’s scalable lidar methane monitoring as crucial to both understanding how to reduce climate change and enabling new renewable energy from waste to be a massive and secure domestic energy supply. A huge thanks to Alex Stewart for organising such an impressive and inspiring meeting, hopefully the first in a long series. #BessemerSociety #methanecontrol #lidar #cleanenergy

July 14, 2025

QLM Blog

Methane Emissions Research at the University of Queensland

This week we had a really productive visit to Torbay by Profs Phil Hayes and Sebastian Hoerning from the University of Queensland Gas & Energy Transition Research Centre to discuss how to improve our QLM Camera methane emission quantification in Australian outback hot weather conditions and across large sites like biogas plants and coal seam gas mining areas with widespread ground sources. As Bob Dylan wrote 60 years ago “the answer is blowing in the wind” so we are working to join our panoramic 3D lidar plume and solid object images with anemometer array results and computational wind models to train our data processing pipeline. There is no excuse for a man to turn his head, pretending he just doesn't see, when we can show you in real-time exactly how much methane you can capture if you try.

April 16, 2025

Keeping it Simple to Set Up and Move

post by Murray Reed.One of my favourite engineering acronyms is KISS - keep it simple stupid - where the last word highlights the perennial threat of feature creep in product development. The right “simple” is of course not what is simple to develop, but what is simple to use. We designed QLM Technology’s quantum lidar methane camera to be the very simplest way to accurately monitor methane. We hear the smug question “and why do you think we want to know what we are emitting?” a fair bit of course, but assuming you do want, we are the best way to know. A single QLM camera system covers more than 40 acres of active facility. And every few minutes we give you detailed 3-D images and highly accurate numbers, both of methane concentration and leak rate,. We put the whole system on a small trailer so an engineer can set it up to run autonomously in 15 minutes and you can check on it online from the comfort of your desk. Contact us if you want to know where, when, how big, and why you have methane emissions. Simply seeing is believing.

February 26, 2025

Landfill Methane-to-Energy Monitoring

QLM Tech field applications engineer Nilceia Anchieta has been demonstrating quantum lidar methane cameras at landfills lately and getting spectacular results. The trapping of the gas produced by landfills is one of oldest examples of the waste-to-methane-to-energy industry. Brazil’s huge biogas landfill projects for example are rare examples of successful carbon credit financing. But the big biogas producing landfills like Caieiras in Sao Paulo are still leaving locals fuming about the smell, so better emission control is desperately required. QLM Tech’s quantum methane cameras provide accurate, continuous, and fast methane emissions quantification. Just one camera scanning around 360 degrees can cover more than 40 acres of active area and we are deploying cameras with a mast on a trailer for quick installation and movement in dynamic situations like monitoring a landfill open face. Even in landfills where there are methane trapping and extraction systems in place we see huge emissions, 1000’s of kg/hr, and order-of-magnitude variations as the landfill activity and the weather changes. Our cameras are networked through the cloud to provide instant feedback to the operators when what they are doing uncaps the seal on the trapped methane. QLM’s methane cameras will play a vital role in making landfill gas to energy plants more efficient, more effective, and much better neighbours.

February 17, 2025

International Fugitive Emissions Abatement in Eden

post by Murray Reed. Gavin Lindsay and I went down to the Eden Project in Cornwall yesterday for a symposium by the Cornwall Net Zero Methane Hub coordinated by IFEAA, the International Fugitive Emissions Abatement Association. Thanks to IFEAA Chair George Eustice and CEO Penny Atkins for putting on a strong programme of talks on innovative bio-methane plants for farms, in a great setting, and with a fine range of Cornish pasties and potatoes for lunch. The consolidation and industrialisation of farms are providing opportunities for a bio-methane technology-driven transition to more energy independent and sustainable agriculture with recycling of energy, fertiliser, and feed, plus a massive reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. But farm finances are super tight, subsidies are evaporating, and approvals are tricky to get, so adoption remains sparse. Catching up to Europe is going to take much more coordinated UK government support and it is great to see Cornwall’s enthusiasm for the challenge. It was also clear that measuring exactly how much methane is being emitted and captured by these systems is still a major challenge and QLM Technology’s quantum lidar methane cameras can play an important role in monetizing methane from manure.

February 14, 2025

Autonomous Driving is Better than You Think

post by Murray Reed. My first autonomous e-taxi ride with Waymo in the city was as serene and secure as advertised. It seems like about 5% of the cars on the road here are Waymo so the one coming just for you flashes your initials above the windshield. We went from Moscone Centre to Vesuvio’s at rush hour in 15minutes for $20, so it seems like they are charging a SF SciFi experience premium, but it was well worth it. If a human driver took us on the tangled route it chose I might question whether I was being taken for a ride but it’s hard not to trust these smooth, slick little e-Jaguars. Maybe the world isn’t quite ready to buy full-time autonomous driving yet, but short-term rental works fantastically and will make lots of converts. And if buying QLM Tech ‘s quantum methane camera also seems too much of a commitment for your methane emissions reduction program then we offer the same deal, just take it for a short-term trial. We guarantee it will show you things you want to see.

January 30, 2025

Thoughts on Muscle vs Autonomous Cars

post by Murray Reed . I am back in Palo Alto this week and reminded how much California life depends on cars. The roads are big, fast, and crammed with hostile and inexperienced drivers, so car crashes are literally unavoidable. From the couple I have seen in just the last day, Tesla seems to be packing a disproportionate punch in the carnage. But at the same time beautiful classic cars remain everywhere. This 1965 Chevy Impala in the parking lot of Sigona’s made me flashback to the ‘64 Skylark I drove in grad school at Stanford. Muscle cars just never go out of style. The big change I can’t wait to try out though are the autonomous e-taxis in the city. These have been open-to-all with an app since July in SF, and November in LA. By all accounts Waymo and like are a serene, safe, and sustainable antidote to the crazy driver chaos. Intelligence has always been way cooler than muscle after all.

January 26, 2025

QLM choosen as a WEF flagship Quantum Tech Application

Last year QLM Technology’s quantum methane lidar camera was selected by theWorld Economic Forum to be a flagship quantum technology application highlighted in their new quantum applications hub. The hub’s goal is to increase public awareness of leading examples of quantum tech’s possibilities across industry. QLM is recognised in the WEF report on Embracing the Quantum Economy as one of the most advanced quantum tech application in both feasibility and value. Now for the Forum’s annual meeting in Davos this week we have launched a new video. To catch attention the WEF request was that content needs to be experiential, so we also have interactive versions of placing a lidar camera in the best location on a large industrial site and using a camera remotely to find and identify methane leaks. These are very simple ‘gamifications’ for now but we plan to make them more detailed soon so people can take realistic virtual test drives of our cloud system. Here is the link, please let us know how you score.https://initiatives.weforum.org/quantum/case-study-details/quantum-lidar-methane-camera/aJYTG0000000RzV4AU

January 23, 2025

QLM's Water Meter for Greenhouse Gases

With the world using the atmosphere as an open sewer for greenhouse gases (GHGs) I think there are lessons to be learned from when we used the Thames that way. London suffered through hundreds of years of cholera epidemics until the 1860’s when the government, having been shut down themselves by the issue, finally invested in a closed sewer system and enabled London to become a world leading metropolis. The key enablers for this beyond investment were first to couple water supply and waste-water treatment by law, and second to install water meters in every home and business to measure the flow of product, and by inference the flow of waste. The accuracy and simplicity of water meters mean they are trusted, and everyone pays their bills. For GHGs we keep avoiding coupling supply and treatment together, so we need an equally direct and trusted GHG meter to enable climate control. QLM Technology’s quantum methane lidar camera, which can see exactly where, when, and how much GHGs are being emitted, is the water meter for methane and carbon dioxide. With new regulations that enforce supplier investment into GHG emissions reduction and accurate universal monitoring we will stop creating a monster soup in the atmosphere.

January 20, 2025

New Tunable Diode Laser Gas Lidar patents

QLM Technology has recently been awarded another two new patents, US12,158,419 and EP4291872, expanding on the UK Gas Detection Tuning Modulation patent GB2607646 we were awarded in 2023. Like the UK original, the new patents cover how we use digital code to separate out the different wavelengths in our gas lidar to get highly accurate and unambiguous images of just methane. Water, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and many other gases, and even variations in sunlight and temperature, can all confuse many methane detectors. But by measuring the absorption of more than 20 different infrared wavelengths every microsecond we guarantee our lidar is always only measuring methane. Our Optics R&D Engineer Sara is testing and qualifying new more integrated and higher power tuneable semiconductor lasers so that we can see faster, further and with lower cost. QLM’s quantum lidar methane camera gives molecular level resolution at industrial scale so you can see where, when, and exactly how much methane is being emitted anywhere you need to.

January 16, 2025

QLM Speed Cameras for Methane

Speed limits enforced by aircraft have long been a joke but now traffic officers with radar guns have also had their day. Automatic traffic cameras are now handing out 99% of the speeding tickets in the UK and nabbed about 3 million drivers, or 1 in 15 of all drivers, last year. Together these then pay up about £300 million, more than 10x what it takes to install and service all those car-watching cameras, so new ones are spreading fast. Intelligent cameras are now charging access and parking fees, checking insurance, enforcing seat belt and phone use laws, all makingmoney for road safety, driver training, local authorities and suppliers.QLM Technology’s low cost autonomous lidar methane cameras, which can see exactly where, when, and how much methane is being emitted, can help enforce climate change “speed limits” and pay for themselves. It is time to move beyond handheld leak surveys and “emissions enforced by aircraft” and use lidar cameras on the ground to really stop methane emissions.

January 13, 2025

METEC results for ADED 2.0 trials

QLM Technology took part in a short “ADED 2.0” trial at METEC in Colorado last year to help develop a new protocol that more realistically simulates industrial gas facilities by adding noisy small emissions in with the series of larger releases that we want to catch. In this graph we plot the releases that METEC told us they made in the top chart versus what we measured blindly below, and you can see they strongly agree. And then below that we have added the lidar images of all the major target releases, aligned in order and color coded. The results prove once again that quantum lidar methane cameras can see exactly where, when, and how much methane is being emitted.

January 9, 2025

QLM Exhibits at American Geophysical Union Conference

QLM's exhibit at the 2024 American Geophysical Union Annual Meeting in Washington DC included a live demo of our lidar system and QLM Cloud, our data analytics and visualization portal. The combination enables our customers to detect, image, locate, and quantify methane emissions.

December 13, 2024

Applications Development at QLM

A critical step in successfully scaling field deployments of a new technology is having done - ahead of time - extensive applications development work, deploying the solution in a wide range of environments and sites to ensure that all the site-specific corner cases have been addressed in the design. Post by Murray Reed: "QLM Technology’s quantum lidar methane camera sends out a low-power eye-safe infrared laser beam and detects single photons bounced back off solid objects. Recently we have been inspecting large natural gas storage tanks painted with carbon black so they don’t get as cold in the winter. This black paint absorbs our infrared lidar beam almost completely but because we designed our cameras to pick up shiny reflections as well as scatter we still get clear pictures and accurate measurements even with these challenging targets. QLM’s methane cameras are versatile, practical, and see where, when, and how much methane is being emitted anywhere you need them to. Even if you paint everything black."

December 12, 2024

QLM - The Latest Innovations in Lidar

Despite its critics, lidar in self-driving cars remains the best hope to save the 1 million people killed and 50 million people injured worldwide every year by bad driving. So it’s good to see that Chinese car supplier shipped 134,208 of their lidars at less than $600 each in Q3, and Alphabet plugged another $5.6 billion into . ’s Quantum Lidar Methane camera is for autonomous methane monitoring not driving, and our problem is climate change not carnage on the road, but we have very similar tech, share many of car lidars’ features and components, and are following their path to scale. Lidar is enabling both safe driving and methane control. And incidentally it’s also essential for landing Space-X rockets.

December 10, 2024

QLM Team Holiday Celebrations

As a multi-site, international company, our local QLM teams are taking time celebrating the holiday season together.It's holiday hat & sweater time for our UK-based crew (they get an early start on the holidays as the American staff is still recovering from eating too much turkey last week). Plenty of reasons to gather and celebrate this fall including our winning the Barclays/Visa Innovation in Climate Tech Award this week! Happy Holidays!

December 5, 2024

Thoughts on COP 29 in Baku

Post by Murray Reed:"With COP 29 in Baku, methane is back in the headlines, so the Financial Times has published a new article on industrial emissions. Their headline “How oil and gas companies disguise their methane emissions” has a tabloid tone though and, by not acknowledging the world needs natural gas to replace oil and coal until net-cleaner energy arrives in volume, they underline the polarisation. Satellite and aircraft data on the big picture is motivating but it is “improved on-the-ground measurements”, as the FT article says, that are closing the methane measurement gap. QLM working in partnership with industry to deliver practical control of methane emissions and keep gas in the pipe around the world, from the sun in the USA to the mud in the UK, is good news."

November 19, 2024

QLM Scales Manufacturing

Post by Murray Reed: "QLM is ready for a “Black Friday” on methane control. Every design, procedure, and business choice at QLM is grounded on one question, "will it scale?" That's why our camera technology uses low-cost diode lasers, IoT electronics, and open-source code. Why our designers are experts in automated high-volume production. Why our systems can be used manually or operate autonomously, either through the cloud or on local computers. And why our strategic deployment partners are global industry leaders like SLB. At QLM we're building solutions that scale across applications, industries, and continents, so they can make a significant impact on global methane."

November 18, 2024

UK National Quantum Technology Showcase Exhibit

Post by Murray Reed "6 years ago Xiao and I presented QLM’s first prototype Quantum Lidar Methane camera at the 2018 UK National Quantum Tech Showcase. Today QLM has networks of cloud-controlled cameras autonomously monitoring for methane in industrial operations around the world. And SLB is taking our camera in their emission solutions platform to places we could never reach. We will be back at this year’s NQTS on Friday. Please come and chat if you are interested in developing quantum tech for clean energy and the commercial world. We have just got started."QLM had another great show at the annual UK National Quantum Technology Showcase. QLM's , and were kept busy all day at the booth explaining how our lidar methane cameras were a real-world deployment of quantum technology for clean energy. We got great feedback on Alex's talk and the live demo imaging a bottle of low density methane on the mezzanine was a big hit too.

November 5, 2024

QLM Deployment with UQ Gas & Energy Transition Research Centre

Some fantastic field measurements of fugitive methane emissions from our customers at UQ Gas & Energy Transition Research Centre! Post by "Last month we introduced you to a new autonomous trailer system to detect, visualize, and measure fugitive methane emissions. Today we're excited to share monitoring footage from recent fieldwork in Queensland. The footage shows a sequence of surveys revealing fluctuating emission rates and the plume direction and extent varying with the wind conditions. The trailer, with its methane LiDAR developed by , offers 4-D visualizations of methane sources, scanning, focusing, and recording data over extended periods. It provides comprehensive details on methane emissions, including when, where, how long, and at what rates they occur. Gas & Energy Transition Research Centre’s Assoc Prof Phil Hayes and Dr conducted the recent fieldwork and are currently preparing a paper based on continuous monitoring data to understand factors that influence emission rates. "

September 16, 2024

Severn Trent’s Carbon Programme

Post by , Project and Change Associate Apprentice at "I’m wrapping up my first month as part of the Process Emissions team in Severn Trent’s Carbon Programme, and it’s been a great start diving into impactful projects while settling into the role. Last Friday, I was at our site in Minworth for a meeting with where we reviewed and refined our strategy for emissions (Nitrous Oxide and Methane) spot sampling and data review to ensure it aligns with our future goals. After the meeting, Alex and I took the opportunity to explore some of the monitoring technologies currently in place, giving me valuable insight into how our systems operate on the ground. We focused on one of our LIDAR cameras (pictured below), which detects methane by emitting laser pulses that interact with gas molecules. Using differential absorption techniques, it measures methane concentrations across a 300-meter radius—an impressive tool for monitoring emissions on site! Technologies like this allow us to detect dangerous leaks, support our carbon reporting, and give us some key data for us to work with to further improve our processes. We currently have these LIDAR cameras installed across 3 sites, with plans to install more towards the end of the financial year. I’m excited to see how this project develops and to continue contributing to tackling process emissions during my current rotation with the Process Emissions team!"

September 11, 2024

QLM Nature Cleanup Day

The QLM team had a productive, enjoyable and healthy ~20km nature cleanup hike last week in the Torbay area, resulting in many bags of rubbish being collected along our route and raising £2.3k for our local Rowcroft Hospice! Here are some pictures of the team (and Bo the dog) along the hike through the beautiful local coastline. Thanks to everyone who sponsored us with your donations!

September 9, 2024

Quantifying wastewater sludge emissions

Today’s Plume of the Week is courtesy of Water whose Wanlip, UK Sewage Treatment Works has been the site of a months-long series of emission quantification measurements on a sludge lagoon using QLM’s Quantum Gas Lidar, installed at the site. Such sludge lagoons are a source of methane since organic matter is microbially metabolized under anerobic conditions in the lagoons. Until now it has been difficult to quantify methane emissions from lagoons due to a variety of variables. These include expected spatial variations in emissions across the surface of a lagoon and temporal variations having to do with process changes including sludge inflow, diurnal and seasonal temperature changes and changes in the maturity of the sludge. Further, sporadic ebullition of methane cannot be easily quantified by conventional methods such as floating chambers mainly because of the spatial heterogeneity of the emissions. Other methods including downwind tracer dispersion methods are plagued by reliance on specific wind conditions and geometries of the sources and sensors on a site, giving rise to measurement uncertainties and limiting truly continuous measurements of these inherently intermittent methane sources. The QLM lidar was able to image and measure these effects with the requisite sensitivity to detect and quantify even relatively small, diffuse emissions. The lidar’s ability to image the entire lagoon (and the entire methane plume as it was transported away by wind advection) shows how well suited it is for measurements of diffuse, wide-area sources.

September 5, 2024

University of Queensland Gas & Energy Transition Research Centre & QLM develop mobile, autonomous system for monitoring fugitive methane emissions

Plume of the Week! This week we feature real-world fugitive methane plume hunting in the Australian outback, and imagery captured by our customers Phil Hayes and at who have developed a mobile system for QLM's Quantum Gas Lidar that can easily be transported and rapidly deployed for fugitive methane quantification.

August 5, 2024

Quantifying Emissions from Wastewater Sludge Digesters

Today’s Plume of the Week is courtesy of Water. The QLM Quantum Gas Lidar installed at their Minworth Sewage Treatment Works in the UK was able to detect, image and quantify this emission source and confirmed what was suspected about the methane emissions from the sludge seals on a legacy asset known as a floating roof digester. This has not been a standard digester design for decades, but several such assets are still in use. The seal around the base of the anaerobic digester tank is supported by the sludge to be digested. This has benefits when it comes to the simplicity of design and balancing sludge levels but has a downside in terms methane emissions. Continuous monitoring with QLM was able to 1) confirm methane emissions do occur from the sludge seal, 2) quantify and track the continued nature of the emission, and 3) to build an understanding of how any variation in emission rate may be affected by changes in the digester process. At Minworth STW, a program to replace the roofs is underway and QLM also enables monitoring the newly fixed roofs to confirm the solution’s emission benefits. This allows Severn Trent to understand the benefits to emissions in upgrading the floating roof digesters to fixed roofs, supporting investment decisions across all these assets.

August 1, 2024

QLM Cloud Intro - Part 5

Plume of the Week! Continuing our QLM Cloud workflow walk-through, here we showcase our full reporting and automated alerting capabilities. Site emissions data has both geographic and temporal dimensions and so our reporting allows users to get summarized emissions information by specifying date/time constraints combined with geographical constraints (via user-defined geofence, GIS boundary or selected assets). In customizable report templates, outputs can be configured to include various imagery, time-series emissions plots and tabular summaries. There are a variety of outputs available including PDF summaries, image files, txt/json/csv outputs of all metadata. For customers who want the QLM emissions data to pipe directly into their database or system of record, customizable APIs are also available to streamline integration with existing reporting systems. Additionally, automated text message or email alerts can be configured to send notifications for user-specified emission exceedances (thresholds of emission rate, emission duration or both can be set) across an entire site or on specified equipment.

July 17, 2024

QLM Cloud Intro - Part 4

Plume of the Week! Our customers don’t ALWAYS need to dig into individual plume measurement details and imagery, but when they do…. we have a search tool for that! …continuing our QLM Cloud workflow walkthrough, here we show yet another way to find, review and export our lidar data. This browser provides live search and sort functions, making it easy to locate measurements at a particular location or time, or via other searchable attributes – and many won’t be plumes, but rather data showing there were no emissions at that time and place. The tool allows tagging of individual or groups of measurements for driving follow-up/repair workflows or for associating measurements with specific events. The data can be individually exported or viewed from this screen, or it can be opened for detailed analysis in the emission viewer screen we showed last week. This search engine also underpins our full reporting capability, but to learn more about THAT, you’ll have to join us again next week!

June 19, 2024

QLM Cloud Intro - Part 3

Plume of the Week! If you’ve been following our recent walk-through of the QLM Cloud workflow, here’s the latest: this screen allows detailed inspection of each individual measurement comprising an emission event which, for persistent emissions, will have many individual plume measurements. The statistics (flow rate, distance, timing, duration) for each individual plume snapshot and the average emission rate, total amount emitted and duration for the entire event are shown. An interactive map shows the lidar pointing vector relative to the equipment and emission origin. Users can select and view one of the measurements or see a sequential playback of plume images. Arrows navigate to previous or subsequent emission events and a filter can be selected to show only events on selected equipment. Various images (RGB, lidar intensity, lidar range and methane density) can be viewed for each plume measurement. Tune in again next week to see other ways we make digging into continuous plume data a breeze!

June 12, 2024

QLM Cloud Intro - Part 2

Plume of the Week! Here we show how QLM Cloud organizes and streamlines interacting with the temporal aspect of the spatiotemporal plume data produced by QLM’s Quantum Gas Lidar. Similarly to the spatial Map View shown last week, here you can look at a series of individual quantification measurements that the lidar has localized on specific pieces of equipment and plotted or group them in various ways. This view shows the time series of emission measurements (emission rate as a function of time) for a selected set of geographical elements across a selected time range. For an emission that is seen continuously on the same equipment unit, the individual measurements (dots) are connected by a lines (different colors only for clarity). Each new emission measurement is given an Emission ID (EID) number. If the emission is seen more than once, continuously, on the same equipment, each subsequent measurement retains the original EID until the emission is not seen again, at which point that EID is closed. Measurements (dots) are connected by lines if they belong to the same EID. The grey bars indicate the total emission rate at that time, summing the emission rates of all active emissions at that time for that geographical element (field, site, area or equipment). Clicking on one of the dots navigates to the Emission Data Viewer for that EID. But to learn more about THAT, you’ll have to tune in next week…

June 5, 2024

QLM Cloud Intro - Part 1

Plume of the Week! While capturing plume images every few minutes is all well and good, how do you manage all that lidar data, streaming out at 10MB/minute?! Well, first we compute at the Edge so that we only need to transport a tiny fraction of that data to the cloud. Here we show how QLM Cloud seamlessly catalogues and organizes – in time and space – the origins all those methane plumes we measure with the QLM Quantum Gas Lidar. Below is Map View showing the count of positive detections (in purple circles) across a selected date/time rage, localized to equipment or locations being monitored on a facility by the QLM lidar. Clicking on one of those circles shows a summary of emission events (the most recent, the first and the event with the highest emission rate) for that item. You can also get a quick sum of emissions over that time range for selected items. What can you do next? Stay tuned for more examples of how QLM Cloud streamlines data visualization, analysis and reporting.

May 29, 2024

QLM Lidar Sees in 3-D

Plume of the Week! QLM’s Quantum Gas Lidar has demonstrated the most accurate quantification performance of any continuous monitoring technology at METEC, but how is that performance achieved? It’s owing to the inherently 3-D quality of the lidar data – the 3D capability of lidar enables extremely accurate plume size measurement and therefore high quantification accuracy. In other words, the system is able to measure the distance to the plume origin and thereby scale the actual, physical size of the plume. Combining that with the measured methane concentration path-length results in effectively being able to calculate the number of methane molecules in the plume.

May 22, 2024

SLB Methane Lidar Camera Solution - Video Demo

QLM’s Quantum Gas Lidar technology is the foundation for 's Methane Lidar Camera offering for the upstream/midstream Oil & Gas industry. To learn more about SLB’s solution, watch the video:

May 17, 2024

QLM Deployment at Severn Trent - Vlog

We are grateful for the opportunity to work with in their efforts to achieve Net Zero through targeted process emissions reduction. Detection, identification and quantification of specific methane sources informs remedial actions and provides measurement-based validation of the achieved reductions in emissions.

April 17, 2024

QLM Exceeds EPA Quantification Requirements

Plume of the Week! EPA’s recently released methane rules for O&G require 0.4 kg/h Minimum Detection Level (MDL) for technologies like QLM’s Quantum Gas Lidar in order to be approved for use as Continuous Monitor Solutions (CMS). We exceed these requirements – you can see one such typical example from our METEC testing below. CMS solutions must also be able to take a methane measurement at least every 12 hours which is also not an issue for QLM’s (of course, laser-based) lidar, even during winter at high latitudes and at night. A shout out to who recently summarized these requirements in a handy table: Additional examples of our performance at METEC are shown below:

February 7, 2024

Detecting Occluded Leaks

On the heels of the publication of our unmatched methane emission detection/localization/quantification performance in the METEC ADED blind testing, we take a look back at some interesting examples of plumes we saw during that campaign. We are often asked, “What if the leak is behind a tank or something – do you need to see the whole plume, or the origin of the plume, in order to accurately quantify its emission rate?” Nope. As long as you get a fairly representative cross-section of the plume – be that an image including the origin or not, or just an image of the plume tail – the quantification results are nearly identical in both cases. Below is an example – showing our high-accuracy quantification as compared to the true flow rate, as well as the nearly identical quantification values for an image including the whole plume and its origin (left) and an image that excludes the plume origin and where the plume is rather diffuse (right). METEC publication -- QLM is participant "B" in this report:

November 29, 2023

Time-Series Emissions Analysis

The behavior of individual emission sources in time tells us something about the underlying emission source itself. By measuring a source’s flow rate patterns, its intermittency (periodic or random?) and location on a site, it becomes straightforward to distinguish between a constant fugitive emission, a normal process emission and a one-time event. As a continuous monitor, QLM’s Quantum Gas Lidar makes it possible to gather time-series information on the emission source – and when combined with the lidar’s measured geospatial and visual information of the source – it becomes easy to determine what corrective actions to take, and in what priority order. This lets operators answer the “where, when, what and how much?” questions about their emissions. Below we see several individual emission events (isolated and color coded because of their unique spatial location) that sometimes overlap in time, and have different flow rates, durations and temporal patterns. In the QLM Cloud platform, these quantitative lidar measurements can be summed for individual pieces of equipment for OGMP Level 4 reporting or summed over the entire site for OGMP Level 5 reporting.

September 20, 2023

Measuring Orphaned and Abandoned Oil & Gas Wells

With the attention around identifying and plugging leaky orphaned and abandoned oil & gas wells, we’ve been making measurements with QLM’s Quantum Gas Lidar that showcase its ability to remotely detect and quantify even low-level methane emissions from this type of infrastructure (i.e. an open pipe or well casing). Below are some examples of leaks of various sizes diffusing out of such open pipes.

August 8, 2023

Identifying Individual, Concurrent Events on a Site

Here we focus is on the value of continuous information. Let’s say your recent OGI LDAR survey picked up a couple of minor leaks – but did it record the intermittent triggering of the pressure relief valve? Did it quantify the methane slip from the combined heat & power (CHP) engine? Or did it measure the changing valve seep which happens as the tank fills? These are the types of process-related details that continuous, lidar-based emissions monitoring can best map out, spatially and temporally. By linking site SCADA and time-series emissions data from QLM’s Quantum Gas Lidar, patterns can be discerned, and the benefit of process optimization realized. Here’s an example of FOUR, concurrent events that happened recently at METEC – each with its own unique time-dependent emission profile, duration and specific component leak location – that were individually identified and characterized by the QLM system, despite their spatial proximity and overlap in time.

June 21, 2023

Quantifying Emissions When Leak Origin is Obscured

Here are some examples of spooky shadows of equipment where, if we have a diluted plume tail like these, we sometimes don’t even need context imagery (visible camera images or lidar intensity images as below) to know what solid objects are between our camera and the gas plume. These examples also show that it’s not necessary to directly image the origin of a plume to quantify the emission rate of a source -- we can measure the plume’s gas volume at any point in the plume and use wind information to compute the flow rate of the gas across our field of view. Here, from the recent campaign at METEC, this emission source had a metered flow rate of 6.4kg/h and QLM measured it quite accurately at 6.8kg/h.

June 14, 2023

Correctly Quantifying "Pooling" Methane

This plume is a sidler – sidling up next to this separator equipment, likely due to swirling winds in the wind shadow of the equipment. You might be tempted to ask if “pooling” gas like this, building up before being swept away, affects the quantification of the emission source. In fact it doesn’t since we are looking at the plume’s gas volume within this field of view, and using wind information to compute the flux of gas per unit time exiting the scene that we are imaging. Said another way, the buildup of the ”pool” of gas has come into equilibrium with the wind field sweeping it out of our field of view. The same is true with leaks trapped at ground level where the wind velocity approaches zero right near the ground, but the wind velocity increases geometrically with distance from the ground and gas gets swept out in a way so that the whole plume’s gas volume maintains equilibrium if the source is constant.

June 7, 2023

QLM Lidar & Legacy OGI Compared: The Advantage of Seeing in 3D!

What is one key difference between QLM’s quantum gas imaging lidar and legacy gas imaging? Well, importantly, QLM’s lidar sees things in 3D since lidar imaging inherently measures 3D point clouds, and the resulting 2D images like those below can be produced to include that 3D perspective. Here you see the difference between plumes that are either in front of or behind infrastructure. This goes to our ability to know exactly where plumes are traversing with respect to solid objects that we localize in 3D, and allows us to analyze the scene and determine exactly what is leaking, where.

May 31, 2023

Precise Leak Location in Highly Variable Winds

Here is another example of swirling winds that often change direction, locally, on time scales of tens of seconds. This plume from a ground-level emission was traveling to the left, but abruptly developed another tail to the right. In cases like this, imaging the plume allows us to know exactly where its origin is without having to rely solely on triangulation using wind vectors. QLM just concluded independent evaluation in the 3-month measurement campaign "Advancing Development of Emissions Detection (ADED)" at the CSU Methane Emissions Technology Evaluation Center (METEC) under a single-blind, controlled testing protocol. We anticipate being able to share some extremely good results from this testing soon -- stay tuned!

May 24, 2023

PlumeBob SquarePants!

It’s PlumeBob SquarePants! We continue to be amazed at the variety of shapes plumes take on in different wind fields as seen by QLM’s gas imaging lidar. Interestingly, we saw this plume several times, and it took on a rectangular shape twice. Beyond the cool shapes, these examples are particularly illustrative of how the value of our solution isn’t just in the hardware – just as important are our analytics that transform 3D lidar gas density data into quantitative information about individual emitters. Here, the algorithm identifies the part of the plume that is relevant for emission rate quantification and 3D source localization of this individual source. This allows disentanglement of multiple (even closely-spaced) emission sources on a facility so that individual emitters can be identified and isolated, localized, quantified and most importantly, so that actions for each emitter can be prioritized according to emission rate, safety or other operational concerns.

May 17, 2023

Amusing Plumes: Crab Claw!

In the serious business of algorithm optimization, our engineers end up pouring over hundreds of plume images, and occasionally, we find some pretty amusing shapes – this 5kg/h methane gas release took the shape of a crab claw (or bird beak?) in one frame. Sadly, that didn’t last – the wind shifted direction and made it look normal again.

April 26, 2023

QLM's Internal Validation Testing

We’ve trapped this week’s plume in our gas cell that we use for high-precision metrology testing. Ensuring that our lidar camera makes accurate measurements of gas concentration-pathlength is key to our industry-leading emissions quantification accuracy. For controlled validation testing after any design change we might make, we fill our gas cell with calibrated concentrations of methane, and with the cell’s known optical pathlength, we can validate that the as-designed optical systems and algorithms in all our cameras – coupled with the final manufacturing tests back at the factory – will result in stable, accurate performance by the cameras we ship to field… where they will be challenged by real methane plumes.

April 12, 2023

Plume Hide'n'Seek!

Plume hide’n’seek. This plume is hiding behind a square object. The wind is blowing towards the camera here, and the methane plume is effectively trapped in the wind shadow of the object where the methane is collecting. Some of the methane in inevitably swept out of the shadow and forms a faint plume tail extending to the right in this view, but it is significantly more diluted by the wind than the portion that protected in the wind shadow.

March 29, 2023

Soothing Plume Dynamics!

With the popularity of relaxation videos, we thought we’d contribute our own with these soothing methane plume dynamics… this is a 10 kg/hr release in 2 m/s winds.

March 22, 2023

Pi Day Plume!

Happy Pi Day! We’ve been saving the plume image below for this special day. The turbulent atmosphere makes plumes move in fascinating ways, and when we image them with our gas imaging LiDAR camera, they can pretty much take on any shape imaginable!

March 14, 2023

Plume Behavior in Highly Variable Winds

We think this is the most capricious plume we’ve ever seen! Over the course of the night, this guy just couldn’t decide what he wanted to do. Surprisingly, the winds were pretty light (from nearly still to 1-2m/s) even when the plume appeared long and focused. This plume can, however, blame its ambivalence on the wind, whose direction wavered by nearly 180 degrees.

March 1, 2023

Plume Behavior During Changing Wind Speeds but Constant Direction

In this series of plume images, we can see how the changing wind speed (but constant wind direction) dilutes the plume differently (in comparison to last week’s plume where both speed and direction were changing). This 5 kg/hr plume is 50m from the QLM gas imaging lidar camera. Detecting and quantifying plumes like this, 24/7, day or night, is among the requirements in the new EPA rules for continuous monitoring solutions like ours. These images were captured during a measurement campaign with our partners at at the TTU Oilfield Tech Center.

February 22, 2023

Plume Behavior During Changing Wind Directions

We watched this plume drastically change shape over the course of a few minutes as the wind changed direction and as the turbulence due to the tanks below the leak affected the plume differently at different wind headings. The plume here is 52m from the QLM gas imaging lidar camera and has a 5 kg/hr release rate the camera measured at 4.7 kg/hr. To comply with new EPA regulations, continuous monitoring solutions like ours must be able to provide consistent and accurate methane emissions quantification results in changing conditions, at the required lower levels of detection. These images were captured during a measurement campaign with our partners at SLB at the TTU Oilfield Tech Center.

February 15, 2023

24/7 Nighttime Methane Detection & Quantification

Are you afraid of the dark? We aren’t! QLM’s gas imaging lidar camera is capable of detecting and imaging methane plumes and quantifying emission rates, all in complete darkness, unlike technologies that rely on passive illumination (i.e. sunlight) for imaging. The gas plume image below (right) is superimposed on the lidar’s intensity measurement, providing context imagery of the nearby equipment, making the emission source easy to pinpoint. On the left, you can see the sun has long since set…

February 8, 2023

Plume Behavior in Changing Turbulence

We like this series of plume images since it shows how the atmosphere can locally change over the course of a few minutes: from a uniform wind field – providing nice, laminar flow and yielding a smooth, focused plume – to a more turbulent flow, influenced by convective eddies. The plume here is 25m from the QLM gas imaging lidar camera and has a 10 kg/hr release rate the camera measured at 10.6 kg/hr. To comply with new EPA regulations, continuous monitoring solutions like ours must be able to provide consistent and accurate methane emissions quantification results in changing conditions. These images were captured during a measurement campaign with our partners at SLB at the TTU Oilfield Tech Center.

February 8, 2023

Plumes Behaving Badly! They Are Almost Never “Gaussian”...

This is another plume behaving badly! Here, as with the PotW a few weeks ago, we see the plume shifting around and pooling in low winds in the shadow of a large object, leading to crazy (and hardly Gaussian) shaped plumes. The new EPA rules apply equally to nice and not-so-nice plumes, both of which we can detect and accurately quantify. This plume was 100m from the QLM gas imaging lidar camera with a 5 kg/hr release rate. These images were captured during a measurement campaign with our partners at at the TTU Oilfield Tech Center.

February 1, 2023

Plume Dynamics in Low But Turbulent Winds

Plumes behaving badly! Here we see how a plume – in the wind shadow of a large tank – moves and dilutes in very sporadic and non-uniform ways due to relatively low, yet turbulent winds. Even so, we’re able to measure the emission rate quite accurately and consistently even at a distance of 100m from the QLM gas imaging lidar camera. This is a 10 kg/hr release rate the camera measured at 11.6 kg/hr. It demonstrates the stochastic nature of gas in the wind - even when it blows consistently, the plume moves around chaotically. When the wind changes, it gets even worse! These images were captured during a measurement campaign with our partners at SLB at the TTU Oilfield Tech Center.

February 1, 2023

Plume Behavior in Laminar Flowing Winds

We like this sequence of images since it shows how the plume behaves as eddies in the wind field’s reasonably larimar flow gently disturb the plume, making waves in its tail. The plume here is 100m from the QLM gas imaging lidar camera and has a 10 kg/hr release rate. These images were captured during a measurement campaign with our partners at SLB at the TTU Oilfield Tech Center.

January 25, 2023

Methane Quantification at Extreme Distances

One of the hallmarks of lidar gas imaging is the ability to make high-resolution gas images at a great distance. The QLM camera can measure lidar returns out to ~200m and beyond. In recent testing with our partners at SLB, we maxed out (at 100m) the size of our test setup at the TTU Oilfield Technology Center; here are images of a 1kg/h leak at 100m range. The majority of US O&G facilities for example are far smaller than 200m in radius, so this is a demonstration of how one singular QLM camera can detect, precisely localize, and precisely quantify emissions at such a site from a central vantage point, out to ~200m radially. Note here that we are getting good lidar returns out to >225m, meaning we can measure plumes up to that distance if there is a hard surface at that distance to scatter back the lidar signal: The storage tank here is at ~105m but the field beyond is ~225m at its maximum distance. You can see bits of the plume (located at ~100m) which we detect via photons bouncing back from the ground >200m away, behind the plume.

December 28, 2022

Quantifying Plumes at Ground Level

The QLM camera uses the measured methane concentration gradient of the plume to estimate its center/origin (green diamond), and uses it’s lidar range measurement to the solid surface at the plume origin to determine distance to the plume. This is a ground-level, 10kg/hr controlled release at 55m range, at the Texas Tech Oilfield Technology Center, carried out with our partners at SLB. Another interesting feature of this sequence is that the plume is seen sometimes behind (and sometimes in front of) the two square electrical panels at center.

December 21, 2022

High-Accuracy Quantification in Real-World Conditions

Here’s a plume image taken by the QLM gas imaging lidar camera in some recent controlled release testing with our partners at SLB. The actual emission rate here is 5kg/hr and the camera measured and quantified the emission as 4.9kg/hr at a distance of 52m. This real-world field testing with known leak rates is important in validating the lidar system’s performance and gathering data for continuous algorithm and hardware improvement. This testing was carried out this fall with our partners at SLB at the the TTU Oilfield Technology Center in Lubbock.

December 7, 2022

High-Accuracy Quantification in High Winds

Along with our partners at SLB, we recently demonstrated the QLM gas imaging lidar camera’s capabilities to potential customers, and we were lucky enough to do so on a very windy day. The plume images below are from the controlled methane releases we quantified with the camera mounted some distance away as shown at the TTU Oilfield Technology Center in Lubbock, TX.

November 30, 2022

Accurate Quantification of Very Small Leaks

The proposed EPA emissions rules released last week recommend methane emissions quantification sensitivity as low as 1.2kg/hr for continuous monitoring of some classes of oil & gas facilities. Further, such continuous monitoring technologies would need to operate 24/7 and measure and report emissions every 12 hours (which QLM’s lidar camera uniquely can since it uses a laser and doesn’t rely on passive illumination). The measured plumes below showcase the camera’s ability to detect and quantify emissions at or below the EPA’s proposed levels. These are measurements of controlled methane releases carried out with our partners at SLB recently at the Texas Tech U. Oilfield Technology Center in Lubbock.

November 23, 2022

Accurate Quantification in Different Local Wind Fields

These two plumes are from two identically-sized leaks, both at 10L/min. So why do they look different? The answer is in the slightly different local wind field right at the plume origins -- the top plume is more dispersed than the bottom plume. When the plumes are analyzed by QLM’s gas imaging lidar camera, it can identify the the extents of each of the plumes separately: the top plume extends over more area (but at lower concentration density) than the bottom (smaller) plume, which has higher concentration density. The camera’s flow rate measurement depends on both the plume size and density, and so in the calculation, it turns out you get nearly identical flow rate quantification answers for each of these plumes, as you should.

November 16, 2022

Quantification from Plume Tail Measurements

Halloween we showcase this spooky “ghost” plume. The QLM camera can see both the diffuse “tail end” of plumes as well as the high-concentration parts where they begin. In this ghost-like plume, we are seeing just the plume tail since its origin is at left, just outside the field of view. Since we know what the wind is doing, or by following the density gradient, we can pan the camera over to see what component is leaking if we want to, but in fact, we can actually get a good flow rate measurement from just the plume tail.

November 9, 2022

Measuring Plumes Occluded by Vegetation

We often get asked if we can see a plume if it is behind solid objects. Generally yes, due to the well-known ability of lidar to be able to “poke through” otherwise visibly occluded scenes (like forest canopies), we can image plumes as they ooze through complex obstructions, as the example below illustrates. Here we’ve released gas deep inside some tomato bushes, and taken an image with the QLM gas imaging lidar camera. By imaging over a few minutes, the gas moves around so we eventually measure nearly the entire plume. Also, there is a lot of depth in our image, as the range image at right shows – we are seeing deep into the tomato bushes – getting lidar returns from the leaves at the surface (at 5.4m from the camera) all the way inside the bush with some leaves a meter inside (at 6.4m). You can see the silhouette of the nearest leaf in the range image.

November 2, 2022

Underground Leak Detection in Wet and Dry Soil Conditions

Methane pancakes – that’s what plumes from underground leaks resemble, more so than they resemble typical plumes, since they hug the ground and spread out laterally. Here we’ve imaged an underground gas leak (~1L/min), and we looked at it when the soil was dry, and then when it was wet. Interestingly, the measured flow rate is only slightly attenuated (by about 30%) in wet soil conditions. You can see that the gas migration patterns (micro-emission points) are slightly changed when the soil gets wet.

October 26, 2022

Imaging Underground Leaks Below Pavement

Today we again explore ground-level leak plumes. This little guy (1 L/min), seen from a distance of 10m from the QLM gas imaging lidar camera, is what you’d typically see form an underground residential natural gas leak that is emerging from a crack in the sidewalk. What’s interesting though is that when you look at it from the side, with the camera pointing along (parallel to) the ground, the plume is only about 10cm tall, and it’s hugging the ground as it spreads out from the leak source. This is because at the surface, the wind speed goes to zero even though the wind was blowing ~2km/h in this case.

October 12, 2022

Atmospheric Physics of Plume Dynamics

Today is another atmospheric physics edition of Plume of the Week! Atmospheric stability – described by the “Pasquill Stability Class,” has a dramatic affect on plume propagation. Below are three examples of methane plume images from the QLM gas imaging lidar camera. The plume at left is in relatively stable, daytime “A” stability class conditions, and the same plume is shown in progressively more unstable/windy “B” and “C” conditions (all the same 70L/min flow rate). In more stable conditions, the plume will travel greater distances before it dilutes and disappears. The advantage of QLM’s lidar, being able to see and measure the plume directly at its origin from great distances (>200m), means leak detection and quantification are less affected by stability class differences than, say, point sensors that measure gas concentration often far from the leak after the unstable atmosphere may have dispersed the plume.

September 21, 2022

Imaging Underground Leaks below Sandy Soil

Plume of the Week! (Well, more of a methane “puddle” than a plume) – this is a simulated “garden variety” underground leak. QLM’s camera was developed initially for above-ground infrastructure and applications, so this is the first image of a below-ground leak measured by the QLM camera. It’s a medium-sized below-ground leak for a natural gas distribution system, at a metered (and QLM-measured) leak rate of about 1L/min (2 scfh, 0.04kg/h). Even with light winds (2m/s, 4.5mph), this methane “puddle” hugs the ground and resists being swept away by the wind because of the boundary condition at the ground and zero wind velocity there.

September 7, 2022

Panoramic Gas Lidar Measurements

It’s a ‘Where's Waldo’s methane balloon?’ edition of Plume of the Week! Can you spot Waldo’s balloon filled with 2% methane? (Waldo has been omitted for clarity). This image, from our Bristol lab’s balcony, represents a full 360° view starting on the left where we’re pointing "behind" the camera’s position at our windows. At the center of the image are the houses and trees beyond the balcony, and on the right is the other side of the balcony. This panoramic image was made by stitching together several of the circular fields of view from our gas imaging lidar camera. You can see that, depending on the strength of the returned, scattered lidar signal, in some places the laser is penetrating the glass and we measure the range to the window blinds, and in other places the stronger returns are from the laser reflecting off the coated windows, in which case we’re measuring the range of scene out beyond the balcony.

August 31, 2022

Quantification of Very Large Emissions

We recently did some testing at the BakerRisk facility near La Vernia, TX where we measured controlled releases of methane and natural gas mixtures. The goal of the testing was to demonstrate detection/alerting and quantification of loss of containment events and fugitive emissions in an Oil & Gas application. Below is one of the methane plumes we imaged – this was a big one – 87 g/s (313 kg/hr, 16300 scfh, 7700 L/min). In the photos you can see the QLM camera and a drone shot of the controlled release facility and various tents housing the various systems under test.

August 24, 2022

Quantification of Venting and Blowdown Operations

This week’s QLM Plume of the Week comes to us from a trial we did last fall with NPL and National Grid Gas at the NGG Bacton Terminal. This trial was on a live gas facility where QLM and NPL detected, localized, quantified and confirmed emission sources on gas assets. In this example, the plume was from an intentional venting operation. The QLM camera was able to see and quantify the plume from this source, located ~200m away, but much of the plume image itself was formed from laser light from the QLM lidar camera that scattered back from objects beyond the leak location -- scattering off trees in the background, located ~250m away. This really shows the power of the highly-sensitive, quantum (single-photon) detection at the heart of the QLM camera – you can visualize and quantify plumes from great distances, day or night.

August 17, 2022

Time-Series Images Aid in Leak Forensics

Is this one leak or two? From the image on the right, you might conclude it’s two, whereas the images on the left and bottom might indicate it’s just one leak. To learn the truth, you need to watch it over a period of time in shifting wind conditions and use analytics to decide. To do this, you also need high spatial resolution.

July 27, 2022

Anatomy of a Plume Measurement

In this Plume of the Week we dissect a plume image. The QLM LiDAR gas camera builds up a point cloud: the LiDAR’s laser scatters from hard objects in the distance (like the tree and car in this example), and the camera measures the backscattered light intensity, range and spectroscopic absorption of methane (concentration path length in ppm*m) for every point in the point cloud. The laser passes through a methane gas cell and the background methane in the air, and registers an absorption signal for both. To reveal the enhanced absorption of a plume, this background level (cell + ambient CH4) is subtracted, in this case revealing a plume that happens to be shaped like a manatee. For context, the background-subtracted methane density image is superimposed on the signal intensity image.

July 27, 2022

Winds Influencing Plume Shape

Plume of the Week! This plume looks like a sausage – the wind direction was changing direction during the time the plume was imaged. It was initially traveling up and to the right, until the wind direction brought it back down and to the left from the vantage point of the QLM gas imaging lidar camera.

July 20, 2022

Plume Imagery in Parallel and Perpendicular Winds

Here are two images of a plume at slightly different times in moderately windy conditions – the wind focuses the plume into a thin line. On the left, the wind is perpendicular to our field of view, and on the right, the wind is coming directly at us. By looking at plumes at different times as the wind direction changes and using analytics, more accurate leak pinpointing and quantification can be achieved.

July 13, 2022

Correct Quantification: Plume Size, Density Profiles, and Wind Fields

These two leaks both have pretty high (and similar) flow rates but were born into two very different wind fields, differing by a factor of 2x. They have similar density profiles and similar spatial sizes when zoom and perspective is taken into account. It’s counterintuitive, therefore, that the plume on the left looks like bigger leak when that’s not the case. This underscores the importance of needing both the wind and gas density measurements in order to get the right emissions quantification answer.

June 29, 2022

Quantifying Plumes Around Infrastructure

A little plume-y hide-and-go-seek in this installment of Plume of the Week. Around complex infrastructure, if you’re watching for plumes, your vantage point may not always be unobstructed. But the gas will find its way around things eventually and the hotspots that persist give away the plume origin that may not have been obvious at first. Plumes can run, but they can’t hide!

June 22, 2022

Lidar Range and Context Imagery Aids in Leak Pinpointing, Especially at Night

The 3-D range (distance) information inherent in a LiDAR measurement allows the QLM gas camera to determine leak origin better than a 2-D image can. Use of 3-D models of complex facilities (digital twins) combined with 3-D LiDAR point cloud data and machine learning can even automate this process of attributing leaks to specific equipment components. Below, there is equipment at ranges of ~37m and ~45m around the leak plume origin. The the highest concentration-pathlength points in the point cloud are at the plume origin, and so their range corresponds to the range of the equipment that is leaking.

June 14, 2022

Emissions Rate Quantification Used for Leak Prioritization

Goldilocks and the three leaks! Here’s what three different sizes of leaks look like, about order of magnitude different in flow rate. Leak rate quantification allows prioritization of larger emitters for remediation. These images are all from a similar ~50m distance from the QLM gas imaging LiDAR camera. Pick your favorite units! The EPA, by the way, is proposing a detection sensitivity value of 10 kg/hr.

June 8, 2022

Methane Emissions Quantification at Wastewater Treatment Plants

Today’s plumes come to us from a recent trial at Severn Trent’s Minworth sewer treatment works (Sutton Coldfield, UK). QLM detected, localized, & quantified methane emissions on digestion tanks. This trial of QLM emissions quantification solution is part of Severn Trent’s pledge to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2030 which includes focused activity to monitor & reduce process emissions.

May 25, 2022

When “Prevailing Wind Directions” Don’t Prevail

What’s counterintuitive about places where there are typical “prevailing winds” like the plains of Colorado where these images were taken, is that sometimes, the prevailing wind direction is anything but, over very short time spans. These images – with wind directions differing by nearly 180 degrees – were taken only a few minutes apart. Wind speed and direction are required variables in calculating flow rate from measured plumes so measuring the wind field is almost as important as measuring the plume concentration profile and shape itself.

May 18, 2022

How Atmospheric Stability Class Affects Plume Shapes

Depending on local atmospheric stability conditions, plumes propagate differently: common examples are plumes categorized as “fanning”, “coning” “looping” or “fumigation”. In these views of the same leak location, you can see very different plume behaviors depending on varying atmospheric stability. The plumes at right are quite different, even minutes apart with the topmost one showing almost no downward (vertical) dispersion. The plume at left is more dispersed due to atmospheric instability, characteristic of a windy, sunny day whereas you’ll more often see well-behaved plumes on clear nights with little or no wind.

May 11, 2022

Quantifying Plumes in High, Variable Methane Background

At QLM, we are the ”plume whisperers!” In this installment of Plume of the Week, we ask, “What IS a gas plume anyway?” Well, it’s a 3-D region of enhanced gas concentration (relative to the local background). Sometimes the “background” is just the ~2ppm ambient CH4 concentration, but often in O&G production areas like the Permian, the background is WAY higher than that, so some emission sources can easily be masked by high (and dynamically varying) background originating from other, nearby (or even distant) sources. High & variable background often makes it almost impossible to detect – much less locate – emission sources that are buried in the variable background noise. This leads to BOTH false positives and false negatives, and incorrect facility-level emissions measurements. But when you can VISUALIZE and MEASURE the plume and background independently, the background can be removed, revealing the local enhancement so proper quantification and source attribution / localization can be done.

May 4, 2022

Using Lidar Range Imagery to Identify Leaking Components During Very Large Leak Events

With huge emissions like this, looking at the lidar range gives better contrast to identify leak origin. Recent results from ongoing testing at the Methane Emissions Technology Evaluation Center (METEC) testing facility at Colorado State University.

April 27, 2022

Pinpointing Which Components Are Leaking Using Lidar Context Imagery

Today’s QLM plume of the week showcases two pictures of the same leak, a few minutes apart, about 50m from the QLM camera. What’s cool in this example is the use of the context imagery in grey (LiDAR returns per second) in tandem with the LiDAR’s methane absorption pathlength, superimposed on top. With this combination, you not only can tell which component is leaking, you can also see (as can analytics!) that the leak is specifically on the side of the component opposite the camera.

April 20, 2022

Plumes in High vs. Low Winds

A Tale of Two Plumes… Comparing these two recent Plumes of the Week from QLM’s quantum LiDAR methane gas imaging & emissions quantification camera: The plume on the left – a super-emitting monster – isn't spreading much vertically due to relatively laminar wind flow, so point sensors near ground level often don't detect leaks from 7m-high sources like this if they are intermittently emitting during such winds. (This one is among the highest flow rates we've measured so far at METEC since early February when the blind testing campaign began). On the other hand, the plume on the right is a good example of what plumes do in very low wind conditions -- they kind of pool and linger in the air.Yes indeed, it’s plume-o’-the-week time again! Another one from past weeks at the CSU METEC facility. Even high-volume gas releases like one this don't "float up" due to buoyancy but rather they waft around in even light winds and disperse via turbulent eddies created by nearby objects. This is why traditional means of finding leaks, especially in variable weather is such an art. But when you can SEE the plume, life gets much easier.

April 13, 2022

Why Point Sensors Often Miss Plumes From Tall Infrastructure

Plume of the week! Wind dictates how plumes "fan out" and what they intersect (or don't!) downwind. Plumes from tall (~7m here) structures are hard to catch with ground-based, downwind sniffers.

March 16, 2022

CSU’s METEC ADED Testing Campaign

Futuristic walruses basking on the beach at sunset? No, actually recent images of oil & gas separators from our ongoing deployment at METEC – lidar range image (left) and lidar intensity with the overlaid methane imaging (right) of a natural gas leak from our quantum gas lidar camera. Real-time, high-resolution emissions imagery like this helps operators immediately know where emissions are and how big they are, so remediation can be prioritized for the most important issues. Since the imagery enables analytics to understand the difference between, say, normal venting and emergent leaks from malfunctioning equipment, unnecessary truck rolls to the field are avoided. Images like this best showcase the value of the QLM technology like words can’t. We are participating in the “Advancing Development of Methane Detection” (ADED) automated/continuous methane monitoring trials at the Colorado State University Energy Institute’s Methane Emissions Technology Evaluation Center (METEC). METEC is a proving ground for emissions tech like ours, providing transparent, scientific performance validation and providing technology providers like QLM massive amounts of real-world data for continuous improvement and algorithm development.

February 9, 2022

Example of High Spatial Resolution Performance of QLM Lidar

Here you see an example of controlled release testing we’ve done on our “leak wagon” to train our analytics to be able to identify individual, nearby leaks that may be from different equipment and have different importance. The lidar can resolve features as small as ~10cm, allowing operators to see exactly what components are leaking.

February 2, 2022

Continuous Monitoring is Critical to Catching Intermittent Emissions

Now you see it… now you don’t! Here’s the first natural gas leak we saw with our quantum LiDAR camera at the METEC test facility this week during provisioning prior to the trial kickoff. Many of the biggest leaks in the O&G infrastructure are intermittent like this example – to find ALL of them, you’d need watch everything all the time. While all detection & quantification technologies + methods have their place in solving the methane problem, it’s worth noting that intermittent survey methods necessarily miss some intermittent leaks – the more infrequently you measure, the more intermittent super emitters go undetected. Continuous in-situ sniffers can tell you if there’s a leak in a general area, but can’t really pinpoint it, and may miss intermittent events if the wind is in the wrong direction then. Ground-based sniffers may miss leaks from tall equipment like this leak that’s 7m in the air. Methane imagers that can’t see in the dark may miss short-lived emission events that occur at night. So what to do? The QLM methane camera is a LiDAR, so the laser is our flashlight for seeing leaks day or night. It gives actionable imagery and quantifies, so responses can be prioritized for the largest emitters or for safety reasons. And the auto industry’s LiDAR demand is rapidly dropping the cost of LiDAR technology in general, a cost reduction curve we are riding with them. It is therefore scalable, so you could indeed watch everything, all the time. To verifiably achieve their ESG goals, methane-intensive businesses will monitor emissions by the most credible, actionable and cost effective means. It will be a bit of a methane emissions monitoring arms race. QLM has a solution that ticks those boxes for a significant fraction of the highest-emitting O&G infrastructure. We’re excited to show what we can do!

January 29, 2022