Predicting hydrocarbon nuisance odours from petroleum storage tank emissions

Abstract

This study focused on predicting hydrocarbon emissions that may lead to nuisance odour complaints, specifically in Alberta’s Peace River Oil Sands areas. These emissions were calculated from monthly gas production flow rates into the closest heavy-oil production systems to the odour complaint locations. The distribution of odour complaint occurrences and their distances (between receptor and source and the source’s nearest resident) were reviewed; and the air dispersion of two odourants, n-butane and hydrogen sulphide, were modelled under three distinct weather scenarios. The study found that operations managers could not employ the developed research procedure to predict hydrocarbon nuisance odours from their production systems; however, the results would assist in understanding the precursors that lead to hydrocarbon nuisance odours from production systems.