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High-tech gadgets detect gas leaks, heat differences
Joe McWilliams
Lakeside Leader
When Kelly Pearson turns on his infrared video camera, a ghostly version of reality appears, showing temperature variations. If the object in view is your roof or the walls of your house, you can see right away if your insulation is doing its job, or if cold air is entering through cracks, or moisture has gathered.
Pearson, who runs Pearscan Thermography in Slave Lake, also has a gas detection device that looks like a camera. It can show fugitive emissions as plain as day. By way of illustration, Pearson shows a video of streams of gas wafting out of valves at a Slave Lake area gas plant on a job he did a few months ago.
“I found 38 leaks,” he says.
You might think such leaks would be obvious – to the nose if not the eye, but Pearson says that’s often not the case.
“At the trade show I had propane running all day and you couldn’t smell it,” he says.
The gas detection device is not your everyday piece of equipment. It’s based on what is apparently fairly recent military technology, and Pearson says he had to be cleared by both the U.S. State Department and U.S. Congress to be able to purchase it. As it runs, the sound of a compressor can be heard, which Pearson says is needed to cool the ‘gas detector unit’ inside to a frosty minus 260 degrees Celsius. If there’s gas leaking, this thing can provide the evidence.
Pearson started his new thermography business about this time last year, after several years operating JL Filtration.
“I was looking for something new to do,” he says. “I had seen the gas finder camera in a magazine as a relatively new technology. So I did some more research and ended up buying it. It took me four months to get a permit to use it. It was built for the Navy Seals. I guess there’s some technology in there they don’t want terrorists to getting hold of.”
The infrared camera has a broad variety of uses. Besides building inspections, Pearson has used his in scanning brushpiles for a forest products company, looking for hotspots after they’ve been burned. Another use is to scan all sorts of electrical equipment to see where overheating indicates problems. The camera not only shows areas of temperature difference, but also can give an accurate temperature reading of the area in the crosshairs, to within .2 per cent.
Whatever he finds, Pearson provides a DVD to his client with voice-over commentary recorded at the same time as the image. What the clients do with the information, he says, “is up to their due diligence.”
Pearscan Thermography can be contacted at 780-849-0548.
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