Qnergy’s Compressed Air Pneumatics (CAP3) methane emission mitigating skid was featured in the most recent issue of Hart Energy’s E&P Magazine. Here is what they had to say about Qnergy’s solution to keeping a lid on greenhouse gas emissions
In April, the OGCI fund, along with others, provided Qnergy with $10 million in Series B funding to accelerate the deployment of its compressed air pneumatics product, CAP3. The application, which couples Qnergy’s remote power generators with air compressors, offers a low-emission alternative to gas pneumatic devices, which vent spent gas into the atmosphere and are often used in upstream oil and gas operations
“Gas pneumatics are responsible for about 20% to 40% of the gas industry’s supply chain in North America,” said Qnergy CEO Ory Zik. “And methane is a very potent greenhouse gas at 25 or even 85 times more than CO2, and the gas industry is very sensitive to those methane emissions. Pneumatic devices are among the easiest to solve. The same technology that is used for these pneumatic devices can be used when you use compressed air or clean air as the source of power. All you need conceptually is a power generator that compresses the air and replaces natural gas or methane as a source of power with compressed air.”
Zik explained that Qnergy’s technology is based on the Stirling engine, which generates electricity by a cyclic compression of air and gas at differing temperatures. Qnergy’s CAP3 system combusts the normally vented methane.
“The oil and gas industry is focusing aggressively on reducing methane emissions throughout the supply chain,” Zik said. “About 20% of those emissions are low-hanging fruit that can be updated through pneumatic devices. After focusing intensely on fugitive emissions through leak detection and correction, now the next stage is venting, and this is what this technology serves.”
Sam Gabbita, OGCI Climate Investments venture director, said Qnergy’s technology was appealing to the fund because it offered low-cost and reliable energy that can be applied at scale across much of the industry.
“There are about 250,000 pneumatic devices just in the U.S. alone,” Gabbita said. “And these are emitting about 14 million tons of CO2 when you convert the methane equivalent. So the opportunity to use Qnergy’s remote power engine to basically run compressed air rather than typical methane was a beautiful marriage. We liked the fact that there was established technology, and we loved the fact that we could use this established technology to decarbonize an important part of the oil and gas value chain.”
