Decarbonisation Innovation Approach to Address Global Methane Pledge
Authors: AlRaeesi F. , Bandopadhyay D. , AlMazrouie S. 
Published: September 2024

Aligned with UAE’s Net Zero Pledge and ADNOC’s Sustainability Targets 2030, ADNOC Gas has developed a robust decarbonization roadmap to accomplish 25%+ GHG emission reduction by 2030 compared to baseline year of 2019, through Innovation and technological interventions. In addition, ADNOC has endorsed the "Oil & Gas Methane Partnership (OGMP 2.0)", undertaking methane monitoring from all its sources and taking actions to reduce methane emissions, a key contributor to overall GHG emissions.

Towards its commitment to achieve zero methane emission by 2030, ADNOC Gas has implemented state-of-the-art flare.IQ technology, an Advance Process Control (APC) application to optimize flare operations, demonstrating real-time improvement in the combustion efficiency and steam/fuel savings, thereby reducing methane and overall GHG emissions.

The paper explains how Baker Hughes arrived at its flare.IQ solution. Having developed the flare.IQ solution, the paper will go on to describe how complex its technology works. In short, using an advanced analytics platform, operators can pull critical information about their flare system, including temperature, pressure, vent gas velocities and gas composition to calculate the optimum levels of flare performance and ensure 98%+ high-efficiency flare combustion.

To address this challenge and in line with ADNOC commitment towards Oil and Gas Methane Partnership (OGMP) 2.0 Gold Standard, ADNOC Gas, in partnership with M/s Baker Hughes, introduced a state-of-the-art flare.IQ technology, an integrated hardware, software, and service solution for the management of flare gas. It functions as an Advanced Process Controller taking flare conditions (flow, temperature, pressure, BTU) as inputs, calculating against a model and outputs set points to the Distributed Control System (DCS) for air assist flow rate and fuel gas flow rate to achieve required destruction efficiency of the flare system. This control-based solution significantly improves flare combustion efficiency, reduces the cover gas consumption, and provides smokeless flaring.

ADNOC Gas successfully implemented the flare.IQ technology in one of its facilities to optimize flare operations, monitor and reduce emissions in real time resulting in smokeless flaring and operational savings. Flare.IQ Technology supports ADNOC Digitalization, having its solution development, the complex technology works using an advanced analytics platform where operators can pull critical information about their flare system including temperature, pressure, vent gas.

The key benefits of the flare.IQ Technology include:

Optimizing the combustion efficiency to Combustion Efficiency (CE)% &gt;98% in assisted flares Methane (CH4) Emission quantification and reduction in compliance to OGMP 2.0 Level 4 monitoring Improve overall flare operational efficiency by optimizing steam and fuel consumption resulting in savings. Achieve smokeless flare operation when operated in cascade mode. Real-time monitoring of combustion efficiency, Net Heating Value (NHV), Carbon Dioxide Equivalent (CO2eq), Carbon Dioxide (CO2), Carbon Monoxide (CO), Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC). Replace static emissions factors with real-time CE / DRE measurement. Identify issues early and intervene quickly by having access to real-time combustion efficiency data on the production floor.

Methane emission is one of the most critical focus areas to combat climate change and are a prevalent talking point in the public domain. Flare.IQ is an emerging solution that is easy to deploy, cost effective and is being rapidly deployed by the industry. With the oil and gas industry keen to raise awareness of its response to combatting emissions, flare.IQ is a largely untold positive story.

Methane is a major greenhouse gas with a Global Warming Potential (GWP) of 27-30 over 100 years. Oil and Gas sector is responsible for around +30% of global methane emissions and poses huge challenge to limit these emissions towards the global battle against climate change [2].

At ADNOC, unburnt combustion in the flares contributes more than 50% of total methane emissions. Further, uncontrolled consumption of cover gas or steam (high fuel consumption) in association with flaring leads to higher GHG emissions. Accordingly, ADNOC is striving to leverage innovation and technological interventions to address this challenge.