Techniques for detecting and quantifying fugitive emissions – results of comparative field studies

Report no. 6/15: Sniffing and Optical Gas Imaging (OGI) methods for the detection of refinery fugitive VOC emissions were compared under field conditions. Both of these methods are described as Best Available Techniques (BAT) in the EU BAT Reference (BREF) document for refining of mineral oil and gas.

Sniffing is a traditional method defined by standards and OGI is a newer technique offering considerable advantages. The comparison of these methods was made quantitative by using a bagging technique to explicitly measure emission rates. It was found that Optical Gas Imaging was very successful in finding the majority of the mass emissions and therefore it can be considered as effective as Sniffing and as a standalone leak detection and repair method.