Mapping Out Methane and Ozone with Our Handy-Dandy Backpack Platform!

Hi all! This week we have some exciting new figures for mapping out natural gas emissions with our new backpack platform! We have been working on making our backpack platform for methane, ethane, and ozone concentration monitoring with GPS tagging for the past couple of weeks since the solar powered backpack came in the mail. All this work has come to fruition with a field deployment to a hiking trail with suspected leaky pipes emitting natural gas (methane with ethane), spotted by one of our collaborators at IUP.

Our set up started with the methane, ethane, and ozone monitors powered up in the backpack. Next, the linked sampling line was set at the end of the sampling rod for stable and consistent air sampling about 25cm off the ground. At that same end, we had our GPS device attached to provide an accurate account of where we were logging the concentrations for our species. This gives a better look at where we are experiencing plumes of natural gas, indicated by an ethane/methane ratio seen on the viewing app for the methane and ethane monitor.

Since sampling air can take some time and does not give instantaneous reading using sampling lines, our method was to keep walking to a repetition of taking 2 steps (approximately 4 feet), then a pause that lasts the same time duration of the time of the stepping motions. We continued this pattern through the site, until we reached the area that was suspected of elevated methane emissions. The area in question is shown below. At that point, we started having a slower pace and more pauses that consisted of 10 second in one spot.

We sampled in a more gridded walking pattern along accessible paths. We were able to observe higher concentrations of methane in this area than other parts of the site. This helped validate our backpack platforms abilities to trace these noticeable amounts of methane and have the data drawn up as a figure in R.

Above are the figures we were able to render from R. Depicted, is the sampling path we took for our readings around the site of the suspected natural gas emissions along with their linked concentrations in the Ozone Map and the Methane Map. This new backpack platform for atmospheric monitoring at ground level brings an important set of data to be considered when looking at methane and ethane concentrations and looking at its relationship with ozone production. Have a good week, all, from us and this lovely rock we spotted on the field day!