Emission factor estimation for oil and gas facilities

Fugitive emission rate quantification in an oil and gas facility is an important step of risk management. There are several studies conducted by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) and American Petroleum Institute (API) proposing methods of estimating emission rates and factors. Four major approaches of estimating these emissions, in the order of their accuracy, are: average emission factor approach, screening ranges emission factor approach, USEPA correlation equation approach, and unit-specific correlation equation approach. The focus of this study is to optimize the USEPA correlation equations to estimate the emission rate of different units in an oil and gas facility. In the developed methodology, the data available from USEPA (1995) is used to develop new sets of equations. A comparison between USEPA correlation equations and the proposed equations is performed to define the optimum sets of equations. It is observed that for pumps, flanges, open-ended lines, and others, the proposed developed equations provide a better estimation of emission rate, whereas for other sources, USEPA equations supply the better estimate of emission rate. © 2011 The Institution of Chemical Engineers.