EERL is pleased to congratulate Bradley Conrad, who successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis, Quantification of Black Carbon Emissions from Gas Flaring and Standardization of the Sky-LOSA Measurement Technique, on September 11th, 2020. Bradley’s outstanding research has been central to FlareNet’s Theme 5 objectives and was nominated by his thesis examination committee for the prestigious Senate Medal for Outstanding Academic Achievement at Carleton University.
Theme 5 of the FlareNet Network aims to develop novel technology for field measurements and apply these to conduct quantitative in situ field measurements of flare black carbon (BC) emissions rates as a function of flare gas flow rates and composition. Until recently, there were no viable approaches for directly measuring BC emission rates from open flares in situ. This has changed with the emergence of a new measurement technology known as sky-LOSA (Line-Of-Sight Attenuation using sky-light), which enables remote optical measurement of soot concentration and emission rates in flare plumes.
Bradley’s Ph.D. research has:
- Strengthened the sky-LOSA techniques for quantifying black carbon emissions;
- Refined the algorithm of sky-LOSA, which included quantifying beam steering and multiple scattering;
- Quantified variability in mass absorption cross-section (MAC) of emitted black carbon from flames and created a new model to predict its variability;
- Standardized the sky-LOSA data acquisition; and
- Created a new open-source software utility that can guide users of the sky-LOSA in minimizing measurement uncertainty in the field
Bradley has also been the lead author on eight publications during his Ph.D. studies in leading academic journals in addition to numerous conference presentations. Links to these articles may be found on the publications section of the EERL website.
The FlareNet Network and the Energy Emissions Research (EERL) at Carleton University congratulates Dr. Conrad on his exceptional research achievements.