Application of a Small Unmanned Aerial System to Measure Ammonia Emissions from a Pilot Amine-CO₂ Capture System

• Main Authors: Travis J. Schuyler, Bradley Irvin, Keemia Abad, Jesse G. Thompson, Kunlei Liu, Marcelo I. Guzman
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-12-01
• Series: Sensors
• Subjects: ammonia emission; monoethanolamine; amine scrubbing; coal; flue gas; unmanned
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/20/23/6974
• ISSN: 1424-8220

The quantification of atmospheric gases with small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS) is expanding the ability to safely perform environmental monitoring tasks and quickly evaluate the impact of technologies. In this work, a calibrated sUAS is used to quantify the emissions of ammonia (NH₃) gas from the exit stack a 0.1 MWth pilot-scale carbon capture system (CCS) employing a 5 M monoethanolamine (MEA) solvent to scrub CO₂ from coal combustion flue gas. A comparison of the results using the sUAS against the ion chromatography technique with the EPA CTM-027 method for the standard emission sampling of NH₃ shows good agreement. Therefore, the work demonstrates the usefulness of sUAS as an alternative method of emission measurement, supporting its application in lieu of traditional sampling techniques to collect real time emission data.