Test & measurement Prior to testing, Tewksbury reached out to a
FLIR Representative who visited his classroom to discuss infrared technology and asked if he could possibly borrow a camera. FLIR was able to provide a FLIR T540 professional handheld camera for the testing which Tewksbury found the camera very intuitive
and easy to use. He only needed to watch a brief tutorial video on the FLIR ResearchIR software and he was ready for the test firing. Tewksbury painted the rocket matte black
to ensure constant emissivity and reduce reflection as much as possible. On test day, he powered up the T540, plugged the ambient conditions of the Mojave Deser t test area into the camera, and placed it far enough away to keep the camera safe while maintaining a tight field of view. He then proceeded to record 30 minutes of footage, the highlights of which are available on YouTube. One of the main reasons Tewksbury wanted
to use a thermal camera was to conduct a failure investigation if their design failed. But the test was a complete success so no failure investigation was necessary. “The rocket worked perfectly. I also got some meaningful data about how the thermal protection system manages the heat.” Following the rocket firing, Tewksbury
continued to gather thermal data on the cooling rocket. “Well after the burn, a couple of minutes, you can actually see the boundaries between our grains. Our motor is actually five or six chunks of propellant stacked on top of each other—it’s called BATES grains—you can actually see the gaps between the grains as hot spots. So we knew that we could quantify how the heat was being transferred.” With these results, Tewksbury and his team are close to obtaining their launch window from the FAA and hope to reach the Karman Line (100km above sea level) somewhere above Black Rock, Nevada. They will team up with an avionics team from USC that will be responsible for flight software, sensors and parachute deployment. “We’re going to reach just beyond the Karman Line and then fall back—under a parachute, of course,” Tewksbury says.
FLIR Systems
www.flir.com
Still image sequence from a video of the USC Rocket Propulsion Lab “Graveler II” rocket test
quantifying methane leaks and flares
FLIR Systems has reported on how its GF- Series Optical Gas Imaging (OGI) cameras can be used by the oil and gas industry to quantitatively measure methane emissions and create a datum point for future methane reduction calculations. Traditionally gas has been flared when it
arrives as an unwanted part of an oil production stream. Where regulations permit, flaring gas has long been viewed the easiest way to handle this problem. However, gas flaring is damaging for environmental reasons resulting from emission of carbon dioxide and unburnt methane and also risk to health from hydrocarbon liquids and particulate matter entering the atmosphere. As a result, many oil companies are making efforts to get a better handle on both flares and emissions, to try to demonstrate that gas is a cleaner fuel than coal. Over the last decade - OGI cameras have
been widely used in the oil and gas industry to help find leaks. Traditionally their use was usually followed up with other methods, such as sniffers and ultrasonic devices, to assess the size of the leak.
FLIR Systems, in partnership with
Providence Photonics, has developed new Quantitative Optical Gas Imaging (qOGI) technology, which is designed to work exclusively with FLIR GF-Series OGI cameras. Quantitative OGI represents a critical step forward in the world of optical gas imaging because it eliminates the need for secondary sampling devices to quantify gas emissions. This new quantification technology
measures the 2D size of an emitted gas plume, and does a calculation to estimate the volume of the plume in space. Then it uses other data and modelling algorithms to estimate how fast the plume is dispersing into the atmosphere (and by inference how fast gas is going into the plume). By using Providence Photonics’ QL320 in conjunction with a FLIR GFx320 or FLIR GF320 OGI camera, oil and gas producers can now measure mass leak rates or volumetric leak rates for most hydrocarbons including methane. Methane leaks from oil production gas
flaring can be visualised using the new FLIR qOGI technology at distances of up to 33m as long as you have got line of sight.
www.flir.com
Instrumentation Monthly August 2019 27
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