FlareNet presented at The PTAC Forum and Hosted its First AGM in Calgary

Prof Matthew Johnson, PTAC Forum, Calgary Alberta, October 23, 2017

FlareNet researchers and HQP attended both the 2017 Canadian GHG Emission Reduction Forum and FlareNet’s First Annual General Meeting (AGM) in Calgary, Alberta, October 23-24, 2017. Each fall, the Petroleum Technology Alliance Canada (PTAC) organizes a day-long Air Issues Forum in Calgary, featuring presentations and panel discussions on air pollution issues in the Canadian upstream oil and gas industry for a diverse audience of industry and government representatives, as well as members of the academic community and the general public.

Project Engineer Melina Jefferson & HQP Una Trivanovic (UBC)
HQP Poster Session
HQP Mohsen Kazemimanesh, HQP Abbas Ahsan, HQP Chen Kuang, and HQP Hamza Ahsan, all from the University of Alberta

As part of their in-kind contributions to FlareNet, PTAC hosted a parallel poster session for graduate students involved in the FlareNet Network. This event was a huge success, it provided FlareNet’s HQP with an ideal opportunity to interact with industry and government representatives and build their own professional networks.  HQP abstracts and posters 

HQP Rodrigo Miguel (Waterloo University), PI Kevin Thomson (Carleton), PR Gregory Kopp (Western University), Project Engineer Darcy Corbin

FlareNet’s Network Director, Professor Matthew Johnson also provided an overview presentation of the FlareNet Network, including its current research themes and some of its future milestones.

FlareNet’s AGM 

FlareNet’s AGM brought together its principal investigators (PIs), HQP and board members from across Canada to Calgary on October 24th, 2017.  The FlareNet Network is a nationally scaled research initiative uniting leading experts, government, and industry partners to tackle a large-scale research challenge.  The AGM serves as a platform to bring together all of the Network members under one roof to review the Network’s achievements over the past year and to discuss and plan the next major milestones in the coming year.

Research Updates at FlareNet’s AGM, Calgary Alberta, October 24, 2017

The FlareNet Network was launched on October 19, 2016, and it has had a very eventful first year.  It has completed its first collaborative experiments in May 2017, bringing researchers and HQP from across Canada, it also organized four Research Seminars in May. These public research seminars were live-streamed and are available on our website via YouTube videos.  FlareNet was also able to complete another major milestone by conducting field measurements during a flowback event of an oil and gas well in Canada.

Another major objective for 2017 is to prepare Western’s Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel Facility at the University of Western Ontario ready for large-scale combustion experiments. This project would create the world’s first systematic experiments to specifically quantify impacts of wind turbulence scale and intensity on emissions from flares.  Results of this effort will provide industry and regulators with vital quantitative understanding and predictive models for gas and particulate phase emissions from flares subjected to realistic atmospheric wind conditions.  During the week of October 16-20th major construction milestones were completed and a flare is possible at Western, an official launch is tentatively planned for early 2018.

PI Steven Rogak (UBC), PI Jason Olfert (U of A), PI Kevin Thomson (Carleton), PI Gregory Kopp (Western)

The FlareNet AGM included research overviews from the Director Network and research updates from all of the Theme Leads.

Theme One: Flare Emissions during Flowback, Jason Olfert, U of A

Theme Two: Refinery & Upgrading Flares, Larry Kostiuk, U of A

Theme Three: Effects of Turbulent Crosswinds, Western

Theme Four: Properties of Black Carbon, UBC

Theme Five: Novel Technology for Field Measurements, Kevin Thomson, Carleton