While hitting gas is usually an overwhelmingly positive thing in the oil and gas industry, there are other scenarios where gas can be unwelcome at best, and fatal at worst. Explosive gas leaks are an ever-present risk that has to be managed.
Any leak has the potential to accumulate into dangerous clouds that can ignite when they reach a certain concentration. It is for this reason that the market for gas detection technology and equipment is set to grow rapidly in the coming years.
A Transparency Market Research’s featured report deduced that the global gas detection equipment market will expand at a 5% CAGR during the forecast period from 2014 to 2022. In 2013, the global gas detection equipment market was worth $2.1bn and by 2022, the market is projected to be worth $3.3bn.
It noted that the rising use of wireless gas detection equipment is projected to propel the global gas detection equipment market in the coming few years. Factors such as the growing concern for occupational safety and health and safety regulations will also fuel the global gas detection equipment market in the foreseeable future.
By product type, the global gas detection equipment market is divided into portable gas detection equipment and fixed gas detection equipment. The fixed gas detection equipment segment stood out as the dominant sector in the global gas detection equipment market in 2013 and held a market revenue share of 58.4%. The portable gas detection equipment sector is driven by the rising preference for portable, flexible equipment for gas leak detection, particularly in areas that are confined, the report added.
Specifically, regions such as the Middle East, Asia Pacific, and Latin America are projected to witness robust growth in the coming few years. The Middle East and Africa market is projected to grow significantly in the global gas detection equipment market as countries such as Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia are driven by the rising demand from the oil and gas industry in this region.
Certainly a huge number of portable gas detection systems have been launched into the GCC market recently, and a number of noteworthy contracts have been awarded.
In February, Petrofac awarded a contract to Bertin Technologies, a subsidiary of CNIM group, to supply, install and commission a pioneering gas leak tracking system, Second Sight, at the Saudi Aramco owned Jazan refinery.
Second Sight is an infrared gas imaging camera that automatically detects the presence of gas cloud at a distance up to several hundreds of meters and provides a real time visualization of the gas cloud motion as a coloured overlay.
Speaking to Oil & Gas Middle East from the company’s base in France, Romain Verollet, head of Product Management, explained the technology in more detail, saying: “It offers more robust monitoring of the assets when used with the conventional gas detection system.
The technology provides the operator with the localisation of gas leak on a plant map and indicates in real-time the motion of the explosive cloud of butane, propan or LPG. It is composed of multiple Second Sight infrared gas imaging camera that detect automatically gas cloud at a long distance.”
Having just secured an international contract that will see Bertin Technologies working with two of the industry’s blue-chip organisations, Verollet is in a strong position to speak about what it is that operators and service companies look for when choosing which gas detection systems to implement.
“International oil and gas operators are really concerned about the safety,” he says. “They are taking all necessary actions to ensure that their people and infrastructure are safe in the case of a major event. The operators have a plan to reduce the risk associated to their daily operations and one of the risk is to be facing a major gas leaks over a site. For this, gas detection systems needs to provide a measurement of gas leak as soon as possible, so that gas detection systems provide a full monitoring of the situation to handle. So the objective is double, gas detection systems ensure safety and is indicating the potential environmental toll related to the gas leak.”
Neil Quadros, field marketing specialist for Rockwell Automation, says that international oil and gas operators have a number of requirements when it comes gas detection equipment and technology.
“One of the main demands is that the products or technology are highly reliable and available, and for some specifications, the customer will ask for Safety Integrity Level-3 (SIL) rated systems. Customers also want to be sure that the gas detection applications they use are SIL-rated, as well.
“Customers also want the flexibility to communicate to external systems like distributed control systems, as well as making sure that the detectors are capable of remote calibration.”
As ever, technological advancements are driving improvements in health and safety, and the gas detection market is no different.
Explaining how technology in this field has developed, Quadros says: “In the past, the only option was to use point gas detectors, which meant you needed a large number of detectors to cover a large area. But, over the years, Open Path gas detectors have come into play. With these type of detectors, a large area could be covered using just a few of these type of detectors.
“Also, depending on the application, gas leaks can also be detected using thermal imaging cameras. Although this technology is currently available, it has not yet been certified for use as the only method of gas detection that can be present in a plant. You can use these cameras as a supplement to other means of gas detection.”
Picking up on the theme of recent trends and developments, and the impact technology is having on gas detection systems and applications, Verollet comments: “Detection of gas from long distances is a recent development that is now mature enough to enter in industrial sites.
“When used in combination with conventional fire and gas system, it offers remote operation. It presents an image and video format, giving the personnel overall information on the situation to handle. Time spent on inspection are undoubtedly reduced by using infrared gas imaging to pinpoint the leak.
“In addition, the detection technology is changing in finding alternatives to point detection with traditional method. Utrasonic, infrared, laser are few of technologies available for strengthening the information on potential leaks.
“When taking into account wind speed, wind directions, equipment layout, and the fact that point detector only detects one specific gas, there is a need to double check the gas detection conventional system,” he concluded.
