Application of Infrared Thermal Cameras for Gas Leak Detection in Power Utilities

April 3, 2025
6:06 am

Gas leakage not only affects the production of enterprises, but may also pollute the environment and even cause safety accidents such as fire and explosion, threatening social and personal safety. To ensure the safety of production, transportation, and use links, efficient monitoring of gas leakage is required. Compared with traditional point-based detection, infrared thermal cameras have become a more effective detection method due to their advantages of wide coverage, remote detection, rapid leak source localization, and dynamic visualization.

The power industry heavily relies on coal, oil, and natural gas for power generation, and the burning of fossil fuels is one of the main sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Greenhouse gases such as methane are common in landfills, power plants, and biofuel production, while gas leaks from substations and power generation devices may also affect grid security. The infrared gas leakage thermal camera can monitor the operating status of the devices in real time, detect and repair leaks promptly, ensuring system stability.

Among them, sulfur hexafluoride (SF₆) is a commonly used insulating and arc-extinguishing gas in the power industry. Although it is non-toxic and odorless, it will decompose under high temperature or the impact of an electric arc, producing highly toxic substances, which may accumulate in the lower indoor areas, posing a risk of oxygen deficiency or poisoning. Using infrared detectors can quickly identify SF₆ leaks, ensure operational safety, and effectively reduce the risk of accidents.

Thermal Camera Application in Power Utilities for Gas Leak Detection

Industry-wide Full-scenario Solution

1. SF₆ Gas Leakage Detection

SF₆ is a colorless, odorless, non-toxic inert gas that is denser than air. It’s widely used in high-voltage devices, including transformers, circuit breakers, current transformers, and switchgear, to ensure the stable operation of the power grid. While it is non-toxic, it can be harmful to life. As a simple asphyxiant, if the leakage causes a decrease in oxygen concentration, it may lead to dizziness, coma, vomiting, and even death by suffocation. More importantly, SF₆ will decompose under the impact of a high-voltage electric arc, producing highly toxic and strongly corrosive byproducts. Even a small amount of leakage may cause serious harm to both personnel safety and devices.

Therefore, it is crucial to detect SF₆ leakage in a timely and accurate manner. Although traditional gas leak detectors can detect quantitatively, they struggle to quickly and accurately locate the leakage points.

With its high sensitivity, remote and non-contact detection advantages, thermal cameras can detect leakage points in real time and evaluate the scale of leakage without powering off the device, provide intuitive visual images, thus improving detection efficiency and reducing complexity.

The RG600F OGI handheld camera adopts the high spatial resolution of the Raythink technology and a high-sensitivity uncooled VOX detector, so it can efficiently visualize SF₆ gas leakage, accurately locate the leakage source remotely in real time, improve detection accuracy, reduce losses, and ensure the safety of the power grid and personnel.

2. Ammonia Leakage Detection

In the process of power production, boiler feedwater treatment, ammonia production workshops, and hydrazine storage areas often involve the generation and storage of ammonia, so ammonia has become one of the key gases monitored in the power industry.

Ammonia is highly toxic and flammable. Once leaked, it will not only threaten the health of personnel but may also trigger safety accidents such as fire and explosion. While ammonia is colorless, it has a strong and pungent odor, making it easily detectable even at low concentrations, which typically helps in early detection of leaks and prompt emergency response. However, due to factors such as improper operation, device aging, or failure, the risk of ammonia leakage always exists. Therefore, for more reliable early risk warning and to ensure the safety of personnel and property, real-time leakage monitoring and routine inspection remain crucial.

Professional monitoring equipment can compensate for the limitations of human olfaction, detect leaks at lower concentrations or in special circumstances promptly, thereby buying valuable time for emergency response. Traditional detection methods (such as manual routine inspection, observation of oil stains or using conventional ammonia detectors) suffer from low detection efficiency, inability to accurately locate leakage points, and high personnel safety risks and other issues, making it difficult to meet the needs of modern industrial safety management.

An infrared thermal imaging gas leakage detection device can quickly and non-contactly detect ammonia leakage, provide intuitive visual images to accurately locate the leakage point and scale. It is suitable for ammonia refrigeration rooms (monitoring refrigerant leakage), ammonia storage, and the transportation field (real-time detection of leakage risks).

Using infrared gas imaging technology, remote real-time monitoring can be carried out when the device is in operating status, and leakage points can be efficiently locked, allowing for timely action to prevent larger incidents, thereby improving safety management levels.

3. Emission Detection of Thermal Power Plants

During the coal combustion process in thermal power plants, VOCs (volatile organic compounds) and GHGs (greenhouse gases) are emitted, exacerbating global warming. At the same time, some toxic and harmful gases may expose workers to hazardous environments, posing serious health risks or even fatal threats. In addition, these emissions may also lead to high regulatory fines and environmental compensation liabilities for companies, resulting in huge economic losses.

Air pollution monitoring is mainly used to detect and track the concentration of atmospheric pollutants. The monitoring items of molecular pollutants include: Sulfur dioxide (SO₂), nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), carbon monoxide (CO), ozone (O₃), hydrogen fluoride (HF), and hydrocarbons (HCs).

Among them, carbon monoxide (CO) is a colorless, odorless, and highly toxic gas with a density similar to air. Once leaked, it is difficult to detect, but it can cause severe health hazards such as headaches, dizziness, nausea, increased heart rate, and even heart damage or death. Therefore, real-time monitoring of pollutants such as CO is needed to ensure personnel safety.

The Role of Infrared Gas Thermal Cameras

The infrared gas thermal cameras play a key role in environmental monitoring and law enforcement. They can visualize gas leaks and achieve accurate monitoring of the following scenarios:

Exhaust emission monitoring: tracking pollutant emission paths and evaluating emission concentrations
Gas pipeline leakage detection: detecting and accurately locating leakage points
Illegal pollution discharge monitoring: facilitating efficient law enforcement by environmental authorities and the timely cessation of illegal discharge

With the help of infrared gas thermal imaging technology, environmental authorities can quickly locate pollution sources, accurately crack down on environmental violations, improve law enforcement efficiency, and contribute to environmental protection.

4. Refrigerant Freon Leakage Detection

The Freon-based refrigeration system is prone to leakage, which can affect the operation of devices and pose safety and environmental hazards. Its flammability means it may catch fire and release toxic gases when exposed to an open flame after leakage, while large-scale leakage could damage the ozone layer and exacerbate climate change.

The infrared gas leakage thermal camera can scan the device area in real time, generating an intuitive thermal image that clearly displays leakage points on the screen, similar to a smoke effect. This helps inspectors to quickly locate the leakage source, ensuring timely repair, effectively improving detection efficiency, reducing refrigerant loss, and ensuring operational safety and environmental compliance.

5. Natural Gas Leakage

Power generation and distribution stations often use natural gas as fuel, which is mainly composed of methane, ethane, and propane, among which methane accounts for the largest proportion, usually 70%-96%. As a colorless, odorless, non-toxic, and non-corrosive combustible gas with high calorific value and low pollution, natural gas will explode when its concentration in the air reaches 5%-15% and encounters an open flame. Therefore, timely monitoring of natural gas leaks is crucial.

For natural gas storage stations, it is recommended to use an explosion-proof gas imaging PTZ and OGI handheld camera for inspection. The gas cloud imaging PTZ can be installed at the diagonal of the station to achieve full coverage monitoring; the handheld gas imaging camera can re-inspect key areas and leakage points. Combining infrared and visible light high-definition imaging, the device continuously scans the monitoring area according to the preset path, providing 24-hour, uninterrupted online gas leak monitoring to ensure safety.

6. Gas Leakage Detection of Valves and Flanges

Valves and flanges are vital sealing and safety components in pipeline systems. Due to factors such as changes in process conditions, material aging, and improper operation, they are prone to gas leaks, which not only affect production efficiency but may also cause safety accidents.

Through the joint routine inspection of Raythink Technology’s online gas cloud imaging camera TE464G1 and OGI handheld camera RG600F, detection points can be set up in key areas, and an online gas cloud imaging camera can be installed to achieve real-time online monitoring. This method allows for intuitive, efficient, and safe visual routine inspections of key components such as transportation pipelines, valves, and flanges to ensure the normal operation of devices, promptly detect abnormal conditions, and eliminate potential hazards.

At the same time, professionals use the OGI handheld camera to conduct wide-area scans of the routine inspection areas. Gas leaks that are difficult to detect with the naked eye are clearly presented through the instrument display screen, making the leakage points visible. Supervisors can quickly locate and perform maintenance and repairs.

Advantages of Gas Detection Thermal Camera

1. High-Performance Detector

The gas detection infrared thermal imaging camera is equipped with a built-in self-developed chip and adopts an innovative spectral absorption structure, enabling high-sensitivity detection of specific gas wavelengths, ensuring detection accuracy and reliability.

2. Image Enhancement + Gas Coloring

Through image enhancement technology and gas coloring methods, the movement traces of leaked gas are extracted from the infrared thermal imaging video stream and color-coded, significantly improving the human eye’s ability to recognize leaks, making gas leaks clearly visible, and enhancing monitoring efficiency.

3. AI Early Warning to Quickly Locate Leakage Points

Through dynamic learning of continuous multi-frame gas targets, AI technology can realize identification and early warning, quickly locate the leakage area, ensure that potential hazards are detected in the shortest time, and allow for rapid action to be taken.

4. Ultra-Long Service Life

The service life of cooled thermal cameras exceeds 20,000 hours, and the service life of uncooled types can reach more than 10 years, providing long-term stable use guarantees.

5. Whole-Industry-Chain Layout

The product range covers the entire industry chain, including a complete system of cooled gas detectors, uncooled gas detectors, core modules, and finished products, ensuring full control from design to production, improving product quality and technical support capabilities.