Rapid surface detection of CO2 leaks from geologic sequestration sites

This study focuses on developing a method to characterize and detect leakage of carbon dioxide from a geologic sequestration site using a Picarro gas analyser, and to systematically evaluate the robustness of detection ability and optimize the data acquisition parameters by testing under varying conditions at the Zero Emissions Research and Technology field site in Bozeman, MT. It was determined (1) both (CO2)-C-12 or (CO2)-C-13 measurements provide equally good leak detection ability, (2) wind speed and direction does not limit detection ability with a sampling height less than 30 cm, and (3) delta C-13 measurements did not provide a reliable method for leak detection with our data acquisition strategy. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of GHGT-12