The need to rapidly detect, locate and repair natural gas leaks from natural gas infrastructure has become ever more urgent since methane is recognized as a potent greenhouse gas and is contributing to the global climate change. An optical gas sensor based on mid-infrared lasers and the method of backscattering tunable diode laser absorption spectroscopy is developed and provides gas concentration measurements with parts per billion by volume sensitivity. Ethane is a secondary component of natural gas. Concurrent methane and ethane measurement discriminates natural gas from biogas. The ability to approximate emission rate and leak location helps to prioritize repairs. This dual-gas optical gas sensor weighs about 2 kg, is battery-powered and is designed to be easily installed and removed from survey vehicles. A scattering target placed 1-m away from the gas sensor unit provides an open-path configuration for the laser beams to analyze ambient air. While the vehicle is traveling at 10 m/s, this gas sensor package is sensitive to cm-scale gas plumes due to a sample frequency of 100 Hz with data output rate at 10 Hz. Gas concentrations, GPS, and wind information along the survey route are collected wirelessly and processed with a computing tablet. Cloud-based data analytics further process the survey data. Early blind survey testing covered 54 natural gas leaks and 7 sewer emissions. Nearly 100% find rate for all true natural gas leaks was achieved with very low false positives and negatives. Leak indications were verified with follow-up survey with boots on the ground.
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