Grants and Contributions:

Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year (2017-2018 to 2018-2019).

ATCO provides safe, reliable delivery of natural gas to more than 1.2 million customers. Over the past twox000D
decades, the company has not significantly adjusted its monitoring techniques and available tools havex000D
improved. ATCO wishes to study optimizing a combination of walking and mobile vehicle leak detectionx000D
techniques to reduce costs while retaining or improving efficacy. Field experiments will be used to testx000D
resolution with the present industry-standard tools. Prior to this it will be necessary to form model-basedx000D
expectations based on Gaussian plume modeling for the interpretation of results. Experiment results andx000D
economics data for monitoring will be combined to establish the lowest cost combination that still meetsx000D
acceptable certainty and confidence levels. This three-part project entails: 1)Computer-based experiments.x000D
StFX will conduct model experiments to predict relative behavior of mobile detection tools underx000D
representative conditions and understand detection opportunites and relative detection ranges for the detectionx000D
tools in seasonal, day/night, and rural/urban contexts; 2)Field based experiments A) StFX will coordinatex000D
controlled natural gas release tests using both walking and driving methodologies simultaneously. B)x000D
Double-blind tests will guide the optimal relative use of each technology under a range of circumstances;x000D
3)Data Interpretation: StFX will create a report combining field trial results with economics data (cost per km,x000D
time) of each approach and establish the lowest cost combination that meets ATCO's certainty/confidencex000D
requirements.