Abstract

Improved detection of natural gas leaks is of interest to the gas industry. At present, gas survey trucks sample the air at the street surface. The air is then fed through a flame ionization detector (FID) for the detection of methane that may have leaked from a gas line below the street. This method is relatively slow, because the truck can move only a few miles per hour, and is limited in that it cannot make remote measurements of areas that are inaccessible to the truck. Furthermore, the FID reacts to any hydrocarbon in the air, causing false alarms.

© 1985 Optical Society of America