Matthew Ronald Johnson

Carleton University · Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

The technical and economic potential for reducing methane emissions from reported venting and flaring volumes in 2015 at 9422 upstream oil production sites in Alberta, Canada was evaluated in a comprehensive site-by-site analysis. For each site, up to six different technologies for mitigation were considered, based on conserving gas into pipelines,...

Global gas flaring is an important source of black carbon (BC)emissions with uncertain climate impacts. The link between atmospheric concentration and direct radiative forcing (DRF)by BC is its mass absorption cross-section (MAC). MAC data for flare-generated BC are lacking in the literature and the only known data conflict with generally-accepted...

Fugitive emissions or unintentional losses of gas (e.g. leaks) are a significant source of greenhouse gases within the oil and gas sector. Previous work has demonstrated the potential of a scalar transport adjoint method for using sparse sensor data to locate and quantify multiple simultaneous unknown fugitive emission sources within a bluff-body d...

Airborne LiDAR measurements, parallel controlled releases, and on-site optical gas imaging (OGI) survey and pneumatic device count data from 1 year prior, were combined to derive a new measurement-based methane inventory for oil and gas facilities in British Columbia, Canada. Results reveal a surprising distinction in the higher magnitudes, differe...

Critical mitigation of methane emissions from the oil and gas (OG) sector is hampered by inaccurate official inventories and limited understanding of contributing sources. Here we present a framework for incorporating aerial measurements into comprehensive OG sector methane inventories that achieves robust, independent quantification of measurement...

Successful reduction of oil and gas sector methane emissions to meet near-zero intensity targets requires the identification and mitigation of all possible sources. One potentially important source is catalytic heaters, which have largely escaped attention in regulatory and mitigation efforts despite being ubiquitous at upstream production sites in...

Accurate detection sensitivity characterization of remote methane monitoring technologies is critical for designing, implementing, and auditing effective emissions monitoring and mitigation programs. Several research groups have developed test methods based on single/double-blind controlled release protocols and regression-based data analysis techn...

Under the Global Methane Pledge, Canada is developing oil and gas sector methane regulations targeting 75% reductions from 2012 levels by 2030. Without measured baselines and inventories, such policies are ultimately unverifiable and unenforceable. Using the major oil and gas producing province of Saskatchewan as a case study, we derive first-ever...

Mitigation actions and regulations to meet critical 2030 methane reduction targets under the Global Methane Pledge are hampered by uncertainty in true levels of emissions and source breakdowns. Here we present a measurement-based, source-resolved, hybrid top-down/bottom-up methane inventory for conventional upstream oil and gas operations in Canada...

Pollutant emissions from gas flares in the upstream oil and gas (UOG) industry can be exacerbated by aerosols of coproduced liquid hydrocarbons and formation water that survive separation and enter the flare. Of noteworthy concern is the potential impact of salt-laden aerosols, since the associated chlorine may adversely affect combustion and emiss...

Uncontrolled oil production storage tanks are important but poorly understood sources of methane (CH4) emissions in the upstream oil and gas sector. This study reports and analyzes directly measured, temporally varying CH4 emission rates, total gas vent rates, and vent gas CH4 fractions from storage tanks at eight active upstream oil production sit...

As a signatory of the Global Methane Pledge, Canada has committed to > 75% reductions in oil and gas sector methane emissions by 2030. Regulations are being developed to meet this critical objective, but are hampered by uncertainty in true levels of emissions and source breakdowns. This paper presents a measurement-based, source-resolved, hybrid to...

Thorough characterization of probabilities of detection (POD) and quantification uncertainties is fundamentally important to understand the place of aerial measurement technologies in alternative means of emission limitation (AMEL) or alternate fugitive emissions management programs (Alt-FEMP); monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) efforts;...

Cold Heavy Oil Production with or without Sand, CHOP(S), facilities produce a significant portion of Canada's conventional oil. Methane venting from single-well CHOPS facilities in Saskatchewan, Canada was measured (i) using Bridger Photonics' airborne Gas Mapping LiDAR (GML) at 962 sites and (ii) on-site using an optical mass flux meter (VentX), u...

Success in reducing oil and gas sector methane emissions is contingent on understanding the sources driving emissions, associated options for mitigation, and the effectiveness of regulations in achieving intended outcomes. This study combines high-resolution, high-sensitivity aerial survey data with subsequent on-site investigations of detected sou...

We present a new framework for incorporating aerial measurements into comprehensive oil and gas sector methane inventories that achieves robust, independent quantification of measurement and sample size uncertainties, while providing timely source-level insights beyond what is possible in current official inventories. This “hybrid” inventory combin...

Accurately quantifying unsteady methane venting from key oil and gas sector sources such as storage tanks and well casing vents is a critical challenge. Recently, we presented an optical sensor to meet this need that combines volume fraction and Doppler shift measurements using wavelength modulation spectroscopy with 2f harmonic detection to quanti...

Despite strong indications that flares subjected to crosswinds can undergo fuel stripping mechanisms that reduce efficiency and lead to emission of unburned fuel, most published flare experiments have not considered the impact of a crosswind. Knowledge of flare performance in turbulent crosswinds representative of atmospheric wind is especially lac...

Thorough understanding of probabilities of detection (POD) and quantification uncertainties is fundamentally important when applying aerial measurement technologies as part of alternative means of emission limitation (AMEL) or alternate fugitive emissions management programs (Alt-FEMP), as part of monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) effor...

An optical sensor employing tunable diode laser absorption spectroscopy with wavelength modulation and 2f harmonic detection was designed, prototyped, and tested for applications in quantifying methane emissions from vent sources in the oil and gas sector. The methane absorption line at 6026.23 cm–1 (1659.41 nm) was used to measure both flow veloci...

A challenge for mobile measurement of fugitive methane emissions is the availability of portable sensors that feature high sensitivity and fast response times, simultaneously. A methane gas sensor to measure fugitive emissions was developed using a continuous-wave, thermoelectrically cooled, GaSb-based distributed feedback diode laser emitting at a...

Field measurement of flare emissions in turbulent flare plumes is an important and complex challenge. Incomplete combustion from these processes results in emissions of black carbon, unburnt fuels (methane), CO2, and other pollutants. Many field measurement approaches necessarily assume that combustion species are spatially and/or temporally correl...

Controlled, fully-blinded methane releases and ancillary on-site wind measurements were performed during a separate airborne survey of active oil and gas facilities to quantitatively evaluate the capabilities and potential utility of the Bridger Photonics LiDAR-based airborne Gas Mapping LiDAR™ (GML) methane measurement technology under realistic f...

Global flaring volume exceeds 140 billion m³ annually and flares are a key source of particulate air pollution. During flowback operations subsequent to fracturing of a well, droplets of flowback water—with varying levels of dissolved salts—can be entrained in the flared gas. Despite the widespread prevalence of fracturing, very little is known abo...

Gas flaring is an important source of atmospheric soot–black carbon, especially in sensitive Arctic regions. However, emissions have traditionally been challenging to measure and remain poorly characterized, confounding international reporting requirements and adding uncertainty to climate models. The sky-LOSA optical measurement technique has emer...

Field measurement of flare emissions in turbulent flare plumes is an important and complex challenge. The simplest approaches necessarily assume that combustion species are spatially and/or temporally correlated in the plume, such that simple species ratios can be used to close a carbon balance to calculate species emission rates (i.e. emission fac...

A large-scale, laboratory turbulent diffusion flame was used to study the effects of fuel composition on soot size and morphology. The burner and fuels are typical of those used in the upstream oil and gas industry for gas flaring, a practice commonly used to dispose of excess gaseous hydrocarbons. Fuels were characterized by their carbon-to-hydrog...

Gas flaring is an important source of atmospheric soot/black carbon, especially in sensitive Arctic regions. However, emissions have traditionally been challenging to measure and remain poorly characterized, confounding international reporting requirements and adding uncertainty to climate models. The sky-LOSA optical measurement technique has emer...

Measurements of soot/black carbon emissions via optical observations of atmospheric plume transmittance require a correction to account for bias in perceived plume brightness due to inscatter of ambient light. The ability to accurately correct for inscattering is hampered, however, by the potential for multiple scattering (MS) within the plume, whi...

Remote optical measurement techniques are valuable tools for the quantification of combustion-generated, climate-forcing emissions. Leveraging radiometric observations along a detector's line-of-sight, these techniques resolve column density information from which pollutant loading and emission rates can be deduced for an in situ atmospheric plume...

Finding and quantifying unknown (fugitive) releases of gases such as methane from downstream concentration data is a critical environmental problem. Many proposed solutions involve wind and gas dispersion modelling for which an assumed value of the turbulent Schmidt number (Sct), the ratio of the eddy kinematic viscosity to the turbulent diffusivit...

The Canadian federal government and the Province of Alberta (the dominant oil and gas producing province) have released competing methane regulations for the oil and gas sector intended to take effect between January 2020–2023. Provisions in Canadian law could allow the provincial regulations to take precedent, but only if they are deemed to be equ...

Among globally relevant combustion sources, such as diesel emissions and biomass burning, gas flaring remains the most uncertain. A turbulent small-scale gas flaring is used to characterize particulate emissions produced at different flare conditions such as burner diameter, exit velocity, and fuel mixture. The fuel gas mixture is varied by modifyi...

Researchers from myriad fields frequently seek to quantify and classify concentrations of carbonaceous aerosols as organic carbon (OC) or elemental carbon (EC). This is commonly accomplished using thermal-optical OC/EC analyzers (TOAs), which enable measurement via controlled thermal pyrolysis and oxidation under specific temperature protocols and...

Researchers from myriad fields frequently seek to quantify and classify concentrations of carbonaceous aerosols as organic carbon (OC) or elemental carbon (EC). This is commonly accomplished using thermal-optical OC/EC analyzers (TOAs), which enable measurement via controlled thermal pyrolysis and oxidation under specific temperature protocols and...

Fugitive methane emissions from the oil and gas sector are typically addressed through periodic leak detection and repair surveys. These surveys, conducted manually using handheld leak detection technologies, are time-consuming. To improve the speed and cost-effectiveness of leak detection, technology developers are introducing innovative solutions...

With a global gas flaring volume of ∼140 billion cubic meters, flares are an important source of particulate emissions; however, very little is known about the physical and morphological properties of these particle emissions. To study these properties, a laboratory pipe flare producing a buoyant turbulent diffusion flame was used which allowed con...

We performed ground-based measurements (downwind, site-wide characterization) of methane emissions from older light oil and natural gas production sites in Alberta, Canada (Red Deer region, 60 measured sites). We developed a distribution of site-based methane emissions and as previously found in production regions in the United States, a small frac...

Cold Heavy Oil Production with Sands (CHOPS) is a common oil extraction method in the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan that can result in significant methane emissions due to annular venting. Little is known about the magnitude of these emissions, nor their contributions to the regional methane budget. Here we present the results of f...

Fugitive emissions are important sources of greenhouse gases and lost product in the energy sector that can be difficult to detect, but are often easily mitigated once they are known, located, and quantified. In this paper, a scalar transport adjoint-based optimization method is presented to locate and quantify unknown emission sources from downstr...

Airborne measurements of methane emissions from oil and gas infrastructure were completed over two regions of Alberta, Canada. These top-down measurements were directly compared with region-specific bottom-up inventories that utilized current industry-reported flaring and venting volumes (reported data) and quantitative estimates of unreported vent...

Black carbon (BC) emissions from gas flaring in the oil and gas industry are postulated to have critical impacts on climate and public health but actual emission rates remain poorly characterized. This paper presents in situ field measurements of BC emission rates and flare gas volume-specific BC yields for a diverse range of flares. Measurements w...

Fugitive methane emissions from oil sands mining activities are a potentially important source of greenhouse gas emissions for which there are significant uncertainties and a lack of open data. This paper investigates the potential of a control-system approach to estimating fugitive methane emissions by analyzing releasable gas volumes in core samp...

The effects of partial premixing on locally rich, near-stoichiometric, and lean flame regions were investigated in stratified, iso-octane/air turbulent V-flames by varying the mean equivalence ratio gradient along the exit plane of a rectangular slot burner. Instantaneous heat release rate (HRR) images were obtained from the product of spatially re...

Combustion intensity variations along a globally stoichiometric, stratified iso-octane/air turbulent V-flame were measured in the presence of four different equivalence ratio gradients and compared to a reference fully-premixed case. Instantaneous heat release rate (HRR) images were obtained from the simultaneous acquisition of OH and CH2O Planar L...

A tunable diode laser absorption spectroscopy system, employing a 2f wavelength modulation spectroscopy measurement scheme, was developed for remote monitoring of ambient methane fluctuations by way of fiber-optically connected all-optical sensors. Detection of fugitive methane emissions demands a measurement precision less than 2.0 ppmv and a lowe...

Understanding the mechanisms of soot formation, growth, oxidation, and emission is important for diverse reasons including better combustor design, quantifying soot’s contribution to climate change, and mitigating air quality concerns. Instantaneous soot measurement in turbulent flames is difficult, and has mostly been restricted to high-momentum j...

As indicated in recent TCEQ and EPA reports, the flare destruction and removal efficiency (DRE) and combustion efficiency (CE) can drop below the 98% threshold under certain high air/steam-assisted conditions even in compliance with 40 CFR 60.18. Flare operators have a special concern about soot emission, i.e., to avoid visible smoke to comply with...

A comprehensive technical analysis of available industry-reported well activity and production data for Alberta in 2011 has been used to derive flaring, venting, and diesel combustion greenhouse gas and criteria air contaminant emission factors specifically linked to drilling, completion, and operation of hydraulically fractured natural gas wells....

Two complementary analytical methods for quantifying carbon conversion efficiency and species emission rates of gas flares in the form of turbulent non-premixed flames are derived and tested experimentally. Full mathematical expressions for partial derivative terms necessary to facilitate quantitative uncertainty analysis are also derived and prese...

This research is an investigation into the effects of non-hydrocarbon liquids found in fracturing fluid on particulate emissions of flares. The flaring process was simulated by a pilot-scale experiment using a 50.8-mm burner with a methane-based fuel mixture representative of upstream oil and gas (UOG) flare gas. Fuel flow rates created a range of...

Black carbon and NOx from a laboratory-scale flare tip burning a gas mixture representative of solution gas flares typical of the Alberta upstream oil and gas industry were measured. A new and robust method for calculation of carbon conversion efficiency and species emission rates was developed for use in ongoing flare tests and possible field meas...

A tunable diode laser spectroscopy (TDLAS) apparatus was designed to quantify emission rates from fixed roof hydrocarbon storage tanks. A computational model was applied to assist in hardware selection by quantifying system-induced measurement error. Signal-to-noise ratios were considered to attain a detectable lower velocity of 1 m/s. The current...

Although the lean-premixed low-swirl burner (LSB) has been successfully demonstrated in a variety of applications, the mechanisms of flame stabilization are not fully understood and practical approaches for predicting stability limits are lacking. Using a unique fully controllable LSB coupled with a stereoscopic particle image velocimetry system, f...

A new combination of soot diagnostics employing two-angle elastic light scattering and laser-induced incandescence is described that is capable of producing non-intrusive, instantaneous, and simultaneous, in situ measurements of soot volume fraction, primary particle size, and aggregate radius of gyration within flames. Controlled tests of the new...

A new generalized theory governing sky-LOSA measurements (line-of-sight attenuation measurements of sky-light) of soot mass flux in atmospheric plumes has been developed which enables accurate measurements in the presence of in-scattered light from the sky and sun. The new approach is quantitatively tested using field measurement data collected for...

This research is an exploratory investigation into the effects of non-hydrocarbon liquids on flare gas phase and particulate emissions. The flaring process was simulated using a 9.45 mm diameter, natural gas diffusion flame with a 65 mm diameter co-flow air where liquids were introduced into the fuel stream using an ultrasonic atomizer. Various liq...

A new method to calibrate detectors for elastic light scattering (ELS) measurement based on diffuse scattering from a Lambertian surface is presented. The method produces a calibration signal that is approximately seven orders of magnitude larger than a propane gas Rayleigh scattering calibration. The method also allows for calibration of detectors...