ECE.34 – GLIMR Infrared Camera and Green House Gas Leak Detection

• Alianna Bulanhagui
• Ezekiel Camposagrado
• Vincent Galvan
• Melissa Peisker
• Melvin Rodriguez

Greenhouse gas emissions are increasing at an alarming rate and contributing to the climate crisis all over the world. Greenhouse gases such as methane are leaked into the atmosphere during the production and transportation of natural gas, coal, and oil. There is a global effort to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases, especially methane, caused by the oil & gas industry and new U.S. regulations call for the active monitoring of common sites of gas leaks such as pipelines and refineries. Part of this gas leak monitoring involves the use of thermal imaging systems to detect gas leaks invisible to the naked eye. As current systems to detect these leaks can cost tens of thousands of dollars, project GLIMR aims to help combat the climate crisis by being a low cost solution to detect gas leaks. We developed a system that uses an infrared (IR) camera using a thermopile sensor array, raspberry pi, and a neural network/computer vision algorithm. The machine learning will compensate for the lower resolution of the IR camera. This system can distinguish the differences between gases and other warm, moving elements such as humans. It is stationary because it eliminates the time needed to explore an area for a suspected gas leak.