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PROJECT CODE IMPROVING PLANT SAFETY ON GAS
RDU141003 ; I-ECO/54 (UMP-14)
LEAKAGE DETECTION USING THERMAL
PROJECT LEADER
PROF. DR. KAMARUL HAWARI IMAGING SYSTEM
BIN GHAZALI

ACADEMICIAN
1. ASSOC. PROF. DR. SUZAIMAH BINTI RAMLI
2. MR. MOHD SHAWAL BIN JADIN
3. ASSOC. PROF. DR. MUHAMMAD SHARFI BIN NAJIB
4. TUAN SAIYED RASOL BIN TUAN MUDA
5. DR. AMIR IZZANI BIN MOHAMED

INDUSTRIAL / COMMUNITY PARTNER
QMEC CONSULT SDN BHD

CORE FOCUS AREA
ENGINEERING

DURATION
15TH FEBRUARY 2014 – 14TH JUNE 2016
29 MONTHS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Loss of containment in process plant industries can cause undesirable safety and environmental effects. Lack of early
gas leakage detection can cause major problems to the plant. If gas leaks are not discovered early, they could be 63
01
emitted to the air and accumulate as a gas cloud that can ignite and create explosion. This is why continuous monitoring
on potential of gas leakage is very important exercise to ensure safety of the plant. The current practice of inspection
is by locating the gas sensor at any potential of high risk of gas leakage area as well as regular maintenance by doing
leak survey.
Based on the report from US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), United State process plant industries spent USD 1
million annually on leak surveys base on EPA method 21 leak detection protocols. The survey requires the valve, piping
and pumps be individually monitored, the process can be labour intensive and inefficient. Indeed, it was reported that
almost 90% of leakage is not coming from the part that individually monitored and this was became a major problem
to the process plant industries to ensure the safety of the plant. Its raise a question to the process industries on how can
some of the largest gas leak be detected accurately and efficiently? The answer goes to the newly invention tools and
equipment, infrared thermal camera.
Advancement in infrared technology has allowed thermal camera to detect and visualize several gasses. It is
noncontact temperature measurement for gasses and vapour. Recently, this method of gas leakage detection
becomes very popular in the process plant industries. It is very effective as compared to the detection by conventional
sensors for the ability to:-
a) Visualize gas in real time;
b) Pinpoint the location;
c) Large coverage area;
d) Scan components that hard to access and contact by conventional sensor;
AREA OF EXPERTISE INFORMATION OF INDUSTRIAL / COMMUNITY PARTNER
e)
Detect leak without interrupting process; and
Remotely detect the gas.
f)
NO. LEADER / AKADEMICIAN /GI AREA OF EXPERTISE NO. ITEM DETAILS
With the advance features of thermal camera in detection gas leakage, its application in process plant is still
limited because it needs an expert to handle the measurement. Based on that, the inspection can only be done by a
maintenance team during the regular plant maintenance. Therefore, the use of thermal camera for the gas leakage
detection cannot be done continuously and in real-time because it needs human expert to conduct the
operation. On top of that, it is very important to have an automated detection and complete monitoring system that can
report any gas leak without the need of human operator. Integration of hardware thermal camera and the detection
system are capable to perform 24 hours monitoring and detection of gas leakage and can execute early warning of
gas leak. Based on our experience on working with thermal camera on system development and imaging analysis for
electrical power inspection, H1N1 detection as well as for the lab scale gas detection simulation, it is believed that the
automatic system detection can be used to solve a problem on early warning of any potential gas leakage in process plant
industries.

Best Practices in KTP
PROF. DR. KAMARUL HAWARI BIN GHAZALI