Quantitative Field Measurement of Soot Emission from a Large Gas Flare Using Sky-LOSA

Particulate matter emissions from unconfined sources such as gas flares are extremely difficult to quantify, yet there is a significant need for this measurement capability due to the prevalence and magnitude of gas flaring worldwide. Current estimates for soot emissions from flares are rarely, if ever, based on any form of direct data. A newly developed method to quantify the mass emission rate of soot from flares is demonstrated on a large-scale flare at a gas plant in Uzbekistan, in what is believed to be the first in situ quantitative measurement of soot emission rate from a gas flare under field conditions. The technique, named sky-LOSA, is based on line-of-sight attenuation of skylight through a flare plume coupled with image correlation velocimetry. Monochromatic plume transmissivities were measured using a thermoelectrically cooled scientific-grade CCD camera. Plume velocities were separately calculated using image correlation velocimetry on high-speed movie data. For the flare considered, the mean soot emission rate was determined to be 2.0 g/s at a calculated uncertainty of 33%. This emission rate is approximately equivalent to that of 500 buses driving continuously and equates to approximately 275 trillion particles per second. The environmental impact of large, visibly sooting flares can be quite significant.