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Natural Gas Initiative is a cross-campus effort of the Precourt Institute for Energy.

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Isaac Garaway: Eliminating methane emissions from pneumatic devices with stirling driven compressed air

Event Details:

Thursday, April 20, 2023
10:30am - 11:30am PDT

Location

Online

This event is open to:

Alumni/Friends
Faculty/Staff
General Public
Members
Students

Compressed Air Pneumatics (CAP) is an innovative technology that replaces the methane emissions of pneumatic devices with clean, dry, compressed air. By employing highly reliable free-piston Stirling engine technology the end-user utilizes a small fraction of the normally vented methane to efficiently generate continuous and reliable electric power and clean, dry, compressed instrument air. CAP systems conserve valuable instrument gas and entirely eliminate methane venting at the well pad. They also eliminate the “wet-gas” issues associated with low-bleed pneumatic device contamination. In addition to compressed air for well pad automation, CAP technology is able to further provide additional utility grade electric power for additional well pad loads. Other advantages of the Stirling based system is the ability to commission the instrument air system on a variety of tanked fuels like propane and readily switch over to instrument gas once wells are operational, without incurring the high levels of Methane emission typical during startup.  Data from actual deployed CAP system will be reviewed showing how a single CAP solution can annually mitigate over 500,000 standard cubic feet of Methane, which is equivalent to the removal of over 1,000 tCO2E on an annual basis. Operational impacts of using this technology will also be discussed including leak diagnostics and operational health of the pneumatic devices. When sized correctly this technology can driving down the cost of methane abatement below $2/tCO2e.

 

Bio

Dr. Isaac Garaway, CTO of Qnergy, received his Ph.D. in Engineering from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. He is a recognized world expert in Stirling technology with extensive experience in applying pioneering energy technologies into real-life applications and products. Most recently Isaac has been focused on harnessing Stirling technology into practical solutions that mitigate distributed Methane emissions. 

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