Acoustic detection of undersea 

gas reserves and leaks  

TG Leighton, B Berges, PR White

Faculty of Engineering and the Environment

Bubbles are the most powerful underwater sources and scatters of sound

Air

Waterline

Water

Micro-phone

Methane gas and hydrate in the seabed

• The assessment of Dillon (1995) is that the global reserve of methane in the form of hydrate is more than twice the worldwide amount of carbon to be found in all known conventional fossil fuels on Earth.

• Dillon, W. 1995 Gas (methane) hydrates: a new frontier. US Geological Survey, Marine and Coastal Geology Program Fact Sheet, OCLC No.: ocm40490917. Coastal and Marine Geology Program (Geological Survey), US Geological Survey, US Department of the Interior, Woods Hole, MA.

20x the ‘per-molecule’ ‘greenhouse’ warming of CO2

Anything that generates sound can scatter it:

Philosophy: Take current devices, access the raw data, calibrate properly, and quantify bubble size distribution absolutely using off-the-shelf equipment.

Field trials

• West Spitsbergen (August 2011)

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• Oban (May-June 2012)