Ep. #40 - From Oilfields to the ISS: How Distran Is Revolutionizing Leak Detection w/ Dan Moseley

In this episode, we interview Daniel Moseley from Distran USA about a ground breaking gas leak detection camera that uses ultrasonic imaging to "see" sound. Daniel explains how the technology stacks up against conventional OGI and FID tools, what it means for regulatory compliance, and why it's becoming a must-have tool across all oil and gas sectors.

Episode Preview:

"If your leak is a mosquito, our camera is a pair of bat ears."

 "We found the same percentage of methane leaks as OGI—in a quarter of the time and with half the manpower."

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Transcript

Travis McCaughey (00:00)
How's your morning going?

Daniel Moseley (00:02)
It's busy. It is intensely busy.

Travis McCaughey (00:03)
Yeah.

Is that good or?

Daniel Moseley (00:10)
It'll be good if I can catch up ⁓ instead of being stuck with, you know, just, it's a lot. I just need to take a vacation day so I can catch up with work.

Travis McCaughey (00:27)
Okay,

all right. ⁓ yeah, it's going pretty good. Had a, I don't know, little bit of a late, late-ish night last night and, ⁓ you know, all the kids are up getting ready for school, so. No, not.

Daniel Moseley (00:46)
Still snow covered out there?

Travis McCaughey (00:51)
Not where I'm at. There might be some stuff a little bit north that still has some snow, but no, we're all pretty cleared out and everything.

Daniel Moseley (00:59)
Cool, cool. Well, Travis, good to finally meet you in person, I guess. Well, in person. I was out there ⁓ not too long ago, like maybe just under a month ago, and had a nice snowstorm both ways.

It wasn't too bad though, it was nice and I got some great picks.

Travis McCaughey (01:19)
for

cool. Yeah, what's most of the work that you have going on up here?

Daniel Moseley (01:32)
So for Alaska, we're just starting to really break into that area because we don't have a dedicated sales rep for that region ⁓ or covering that region. So it's just kind of as things come along for that region at the moment, we're still growing our US team. So to give you a little background and then to lead into the answer to the question that you just asked, ⁓

We're a Swiss based company, so it's been very Eurocentric for most of its time. It started in 2012, really started to get moving in 2017, 2018. And then we have only really begun to, in earnest, start building out a US team about two and a half years ago.

So as of 2020, 2023 is when we really started to create this US entity. So we've got to Strand USA now. I've been with the company since January, 2024. So our team is still small, but growing and growing rapidly. So what we've got in up in Alaska right now,

It's primarily going to be in the downstream and the refining side of things at the moment. While we are upstream, midstream, and downstream in a host of different clientels and regions, I think right now in Alaska, it's been primarily downstream refineries that we've been in. And I think part of that is just

There hasn't been a lot of focus there just yet. ⁓ But I think as word gets out that we exist, ⁓ that focus is going to start to change and already is starting to change. We're starting to get some feelers out from that area and individuals reaching out curious about the technology.

Travis McCaughey (03:48)
Yeah, I was, when you had reached out to me, I was curious just from the, and I think you're aware, what, just from all the federal ⁓ regulations as far as all the leak detection. And now I think it's coming due where people are getting fines for all their fugitive emissions and stuff. like, this, is this technology better, faster?

you know, more effective than what we're doing now, which is using the UVIR cameras, you know? Yeah.

Daniel Moseley (04:27)
Correct.

And so to speak to that, ⁓ that kind of ⁓ analysis and that work actually started in Europe because obviously they face a lot of that as well ⁓ in making sure that they're able to ⁓ detect and then ⁓ repair leaks that are leaking fugitive emissions, CO2, methane, all the other VOCs. ⁓

Towards that end, we've done quite a few different campaigns, testing campaigns, to compare ourselves and see where we stand alongside, say, OGI, optical gas imaging, ⁓ infrared and UV, and FID ⁓ flame ionization detectors, to see where we stand alongside of them. And what we discovered was that we compare very comparably and optimally with them.

⁓ that we are comparable to them in terms of not just ⁓ the... We're comparable to them in terms of the sizes of the leaks that ⁓ are reportable, but we are stronger in terms of speed and in terms of user variability.

So some of the challenges that exist, just a little bit of my background. ⁓ actually, ⁓ my background's in analytical chemistry. I was very focused on infrared spectroscopy in particular, as well as Raman spectroscopy. So infrared is kind of an area that I come from. ⁓ Optical gas imaging in that case was ⁓ kind of a field that I took to pretty easily. And that doesn't mean it's easy. I just...

took to it easily. ⁓ So with that said, then FID, of course, as well, because we're using them all the time. ⁓ With that said, OGI has very great strengths. There's no doubt that there are some strong areas for it. And I still would consider it ⁓ a very good technology to be using for

Travis McCaughey (06:19)
Yeah.

Daniel Moseley (06:44)
⁓ finding VOCs. One of its strengths is its distance that it can get, and you can get for ⁓ over a mile. In some cases, if you've got a good OGI, ⁓ its other strength where it would be the more ⁓ effective, I'll say, solution would be if you're looking specifically at clouds that have no pressure behind them. So you've got a standing cloud of methane ⁓ and you can't necessarily see that ⁓ with your naked eye, but

Travis McCaughey (06:53)
you

Daniel Moseley (07:14)
the OGI, that's going to pick it up ⁓ very readily, as long as you don't have anything more than a 10 mile per hour wind ⁓ that's blowing and dissipating it away. And it can be very good if you know how to do it well of gathering information on the concentration in parts per million, et cetera. their strengths are there. ⁓

Travis McCaughey (07:33)
Hmm.

Daniel Moseley (07:39)
Where they have challenges is, like I said, if you've got a heavy wind that's blowing it away, what's not there, it can't see. ⁓ So if the concentration isn't strong enough, it's not going to see that. FID has the same challenges. ⁓ And then you have very small leaks. And probably one of the biggest challenges is in the user variability, because the interpretation of what you're looking at can be rather

Travis McCaughey (07:48)
Right.

Daniel Moseley (08:08)
difficult and you have new users who aren't used to it. They start to move very fast and they're not as careful or they don't always know what they're looking for. ⁓ Sometimes even with various contrast modes, sometimes it's very difficult to capture a methane leak, hydrocarbon leak from OGI or even with FID ⁓ as a probe or a sniffer. ⁓

The other challenge is they're limited to just gases that are infrared active or that can be ionized by a flame detector. That means that it's primarily hydrocarbons, not necessarily only, but you're not going to capture, for example, hydrogen. You're not going to capture air leaks. You're not going to get nitrogen. You're not going to get helium. ⁓ There's quite a host of gases that, ⁓ and vacuum leaks is a big one in refineries.

Travis McCaughey (09:07)
Hmm.

Daniel Moseley (09:08)
⁓ You're not going to be able to capture those, unfortunately, ⁓ because the detectors that you're using are blind to them. ⁓ And with OGI, air is the background, so you're not going to capture air leaks, right? ⁓ So that's where we come in with ultrasound. We can kind of fill in some of those gaps where ⁓ OGI is, unfortunately, incapable or

has challenges, we can meet some of those challenges and be able to help with that. So the way that it works is with ultrasound imaging, if you have a gas leak that is under pressure, and it doesn't take much pressure, like a minimum of about a PSI of pressure difference. If you have a gas leak that is under pressure, then as it is pushing gas out from your pipe and into

a lower pressure system, it produces turbulence there at the leak, whether it's a pinhole, whether it's a connector, whether it's a flange leak. ⁓ It's going to push from that higher pressure system into that lower pressure system, produce a lot of turbulence there. That turbulence is what's producing ultrasound. So think of it like the sound you would produce if you blow air through your mouth and then you purse your lips together into a whistle, right? It's producing turbulence there. So it's a high pitched sound.

And in this case, what we're listening to is sound that is so high pitched, it goes into the ultrasound region where we can't hear, but our camera can. So our camera is not listening to the audible region where we hear. Our camera is listening to the high pitched ultrasound region. So if your leak is a mosquito, then our camera is a pair of bat ears, if you will. ⁓

Travis McCaughey (10:45)
Hmm.

Daniel Moseley (11:01)
And the way that works is once that ultrasound makes its way to the microphones on our camera, our camera is able to utilize that and triangulate the exact direction and the exact spot where that sound source is coming from. There's 124 microphones all in a specific ⁓ array pattern on our camera. And so once the sound reaches microphone one, then two, then three, then four, we can triangulate the direction.

We then overlay that on an optical image so that you effectively see sound. And so you can spot it. ⁓ And not only can you spot it, but depending on the size of the leak, you can spot it at great distances. So if we're talking just a 0.1 standard kibu foot per hour leak, something along those lines, ⁓ one or two psi pressure difference behind it, you're going to have to be about a meter out.

Travis McCaughey (11:34)
Right.

Daniel Moseley (11:54)
And if you get any farther than that, you're going to have a hard time seeing it, but you get one scuff per hour leak and now you can get a good 10 feet out. ⁓ You get anything further and you get further out. We've captured leaks out to 300 feet before out on the top of towers and things of that nature where otherwise you might have to build scaffolding to go and take your soap spray or other detectors and sniffers and, and, and be in a contact mode.

That takes a long time. And if you're in a refinery with a web of piping and miles and miles of it all over the place, do you want to be soap spraying everything or taking a contact method to everything? Or would you like to see the majority of your leaks right off the bat? So to bring that real quick back to how we compared with OGI and how this affects us on the regulatory side.

When we ran our test campaigns with OGI, what we were discovering is that we were finding the size leaks, the same ⁓ percentage-wise of methane leaks that OGI was finding in some of these campaigns. ⁓ But in a quarter of the time and with half of the manpower it took. So in our MiTech campaign, for example, they compared us with two experienced OGI operators.

who went out into METEC and they found methane leaks and they found about 80%, 81 % of the methane leaks that were being simulated with OGI and FID together. We went out and we found 80 % of the methane leaks that were being simulated with one person who had barely been trained on it.

in about four hours, whereas OGI and FID took two people, one using FID, one using the OGI, across two work days, so 16 work hours. ⁓ That's where our strength lies. They missed some leaks, we missed some leaks. But when it came to the ⁓ percentage of actual methane emissions, we were number one. We found 100 % of all the reportable leaks. ⁓

what we missed were very small transient leaks. And number two, what we found was within a quarter of the time that everyone else was able to find them in and with far less of the variability and far less training that was required than what OGINFID is doing. What that means for us on the regulatory side was EPA got wind of it, suggested that we submit our technology to the ⁓

as an alternative test method, we're in talks with them right now. ⁓ They have so far, it appears that the bulk of the content of our submission has ⁓ passed muster. Now it's just down to formatting everything now that their format has changed. So it's dotting our I's and crossing our T's. ⁓ But we're now in weekly meetings with the EPA. ⁓

Travis McCaughey (14:57)
Thank

Daniel Moseley (15:04)
we are looking at either late June or mid July for ⁓ probable ⁓ acceptance as an alternative test method for the QUAD-O methane regulations, ⁓ specifically for periodic ⁓ inspections of methane leaks that are ⁓ one kilogram per hour or above. ⁓ And so once that is ⁓

Once that has been, and you can find us, by the way, on their alternative test method page. You can find our public submission and the documentation behind that if anybody is interested in seeing that. I'll send you a link later as well. ⁓ What that means for us is once that is finalized, then we're going to be listed right alongside OGI as an alternative test method.

Travis McCaughey (15:50)
Okay.

Daniel Moseley (16:02)
for those methane regulations. ⁓ And that's going to mean that the training regimen that is going to be required by clients is going to be, it's going to be much less strenuous on our side because our interpretation is so minimal by comparison to OGI. ⁓ What I see on my screen and what you see on your screen is going to be exactly the same thing. It's going to tell us exactly the same information. ⁓

Travis McCaughey (16:23)
Yeah.

Daniel Moseley (16:32)
There's not going to be a, is that a cloud? Is that something? It's going to be very obvious. ⁓ The variability ⁓ is going to be vastly improved for us compared to that. ⁓ Speed is going to be vastly improved because it makes it painfully obvious whether there's any kind of ⁓ a ⁓ signature on the screen compared to what you would see on OGI. ⁓

Where we would be, ⁓ and so for our ⁓ technology, we would be the solution if you're looking for speed and if you're looking for reportable leaks ⁓ under those auspices. Where OGI and FID would be the greater solution would be if you're looking at, say, a kilometer out, trying to find methane clouds that are that far out.

⁓ and you're trying to ⁓ capture clouds rather than something that is under pressure, that's where they would be the stronger solution. In fact, they would be the only solution in that case. We do require pressure, at least a little bit of pressure behind our leaks because what we're listening for, we're not looking at the gas. We're listening to the sound of the turbulence from the leak. And so if it's a perfectly laminar flow,

Travis McCaughey (17:43)
Hmm.

Right.

Daniel Moseley (17:59)
It's a perfectly silent one. And so there's nothing for us to hear.

Travis McCaughey (18:04)
Interesting.

Daniel Moseley (18:05)
And by the way, Travis, I've got, I don't know how much you've actually seen from the technology, but I do have some examples, visual examples I can share as well.

Travis McCaughey (18:16)
yeah, that'd be great.

Daniel Moseley (18:20)
Let me see.

⁓ And you know what if it doesn't work out, that's fine. here it is. It's like right in front of me literally right in

There we go. ⁓ So just to give an idea of some of the primary points where we are used with our ⁓ gas leak detection cameras and where we are strong at, ⁓ primarily what we target is ⁓ obviously safety. have our camera has an intrinsically safe ATEC certified model.

Travis McCaughey (18:30)
there you go.

Daniel Moseley (18:55)
⁓ We're on the verge of getting UL ⁓ Haslock ⁓ certification as well. So we're looking at another couple of weeks for them to ⁓ approve UL certification and then we'll be able to announce that as well.

⁓ Basically, the idea behind our camera is you've got a wealth of piping and we can either soap spray that, we can take sniffers to it, we can use thermal or OGI and you're still going to have, it's going to take a long time. You may be able to find your leaks and find them pretty well, even the small stuff, ⁓ but how much manpower, how many man hours are you wasting doing all of that?

And then in some cases, depending on the type of gas that you're looking for, how safe is that to be utilizing a contact method rather than something you can use where you can see it far off? And then also, what is the value of kind of getting an idea of, is this size of leak even something I want to prioritize or not? ⁓ We are also capable of quantitating leaks for some of the major gases, methane, CO2.

⁓ hydrogen, air, nitrogen, helium, argon, ⁓ we're able to quantify leaks from those ⁓ gases as well to give your ⁓ clients, to give clients downstream and upstream and midstream an idea of how much they're losing ⁓ and help them to be able to prioritize certain leaks. If they're looking to do Eldar, for example, ⁓ that can give them a very strong ⁓ sense of where the priorities lie.

Also where the hazards ⁓ might lie.

So the idea behind this is because we're not looking at the gas, we're listening to the sound of the leak. That means we are, if I can use this term, we're gas agnostic. ⁓ For us, it doesn't matter what the gas is, right? Whether it's air, whether it's hydrogen, whether it's helium, whether it's acetylene, whether it's ammonia, ⁓ whether it's vacuum or whether it's positive pressure leaks, ⁓ we can...

Travis McCaughey (20:57)
Right.

Daniel Moseley (21:09)
⁓ pinpoint and we can find any type of gas and most of the major ones we can quantify as well. have calibrated models within our camera to be able to ⁓ quantify several of the gases including the fugitive emissions.

Travis McCaughey (21:27)
How often does this equipment need to be calibrated or like sent back and certified?

Daniel Moseley (21:36)
That's a great question. So to ⁓ clarify the way that our camera works, it's different from those types of cameras like OGI that are looking directly at the gas ⁓ and therefore are quantifying via a concentration rather than the leak rate. So the calibration that comes with our camera isn't so much on the

on that, it's more going to be calibrating to ensure that the microphones ⁓ and what they are pinpointing correctly overlays with the optical image so that you are actually pinpointing the right spot as opposed to kind of off to the side of it or something along those lines. That's the kind of calibration it would be rather than a quantifiable calibration. for the quantifiable ⁓

calibrations, we typically make sure that there's system updates quarterly just to ensure that we are feeding in the additional data that makes those calibrations tighter ⁓ and more accurate ⁓ as we are ⁓ gathering more data points and ⁓ making that a lot stronger of a regression. ⁓ For our calibration

of the camera itself, making sure that it's seeing things exactly where it's hearing them. ⁓ We recommend every four years sending the camera in and we ensure not just that it's calibrated that way, but also, especially for the Atex intrinsically safe models, we'll take it apart, make sure that it's clean inside and everything is done the way it's supposed to be. And then we put it together.

And it would have to be us because in order for it to be A-Tech certified, it has to be put together by someone who is A-Tech certified to do so, right? So we put a sticker on there basically, that gives you, from this date, you've got until this date, that's when we have recommended sending it in for calibration. We send the clients a reminder about three or four months out.

Travis McCaughey (23:38)
Okay, yeah

Daniel Moseley (23:58)
and then subsequent ones after that just to remind them, hey, calibration time's coming up. And we arrange for them to be able to send it back into us. And what we have as our current model set up, because some of these are purchased not just for finding leaks for efficiency and speed, but in some cases for safety, we want to make sure that they're not without a solution for that.

What we do is we provide them with a replacement camera in the meantime while theirs is being calibrated. And then once theirs is finished, we arrange to send those back. That way they're not without a safe solution and they have that.

Travis McCaughey (24:36)
Yeah.

Is this mostly deployed like through third party or do you find that, like you mentioned, refineries, are they, can they own this and do they, do they choose to purchase it?

Daniel Moseley (24:54)
yeah, no no they own-

Right, most of, we're the OEM and we sell direct. We do have some channel partners as well ⁓ in different areas. We have channel partners, particularly in the power gen verticals. And we found one of our faster growing applications is in composite manufacturing because of our ability to see vacuum leaks. ⁓ But, and which is also why NASA has us on the International Space Station.

⁓ But in the upstream, midstream, downstream world, a lot of our clients will purchase directly. And what typically happens is they'll purchase our camera or a couple of cameras for operations and for maintenance and for reliability. And then, for example, let's say they have a quick turnaround or something that they're commissioning up.

And now they've got big teams and they want to speed up the process by quite a bit. Because again, like I said, if you're using contact methods, what's the value of cutting your inspection times down by a few days? Quite a bit, right? So what often happens is, okay, now they own a camera. Now they can rent additional units for specific projects. So you have a turnaround project. You've got something you're about to commission up.

Travis McCaughey (26:07)
Yeah.

Daniel Moseley (26:22)
you've already got a unit or a couple of units, ⁓ we then will rent out additional ones. So we do have clients who, when they have a project like that coming up, they may rent, you know, eight, 10 cameras or something like that for a couple of weeks, and they've sped up their process immensely.

One of the strengths of this, well, for the detection principle, ⁓ again, like I said, gas leaks, they produce ultrasound because of that turbulence. That's what our camera is listening to and then takes that signal and overlays it onto an optical image. One of the strengths of our camera, besides being able to pinpoint these leaks, ⁓ is that we're able to pinpoint any leak, any gas.

So ⁓ with leak detection for clients in refineries and in other areas, when they're doing pressure testing, when they're commissioning, when they're startup, or if they had an emergency shutdown and once they're finished doing their repairs or what they have to do, they then have to start it back up. There are multiple phases to that startup. You've got your low pressure phase, you've got your mid pressure, and then you put in your feed, right?

Travis McCaughey (27:19)
Mm-hmm.

Daniel Moseley (27:38)
So in that low pressure phase where you're going between 30 to 50 psi pressurizing your system up with depending on the application air or nitrogen, you know something along those lines a lot of leak detection solutions are Off the table that you can't use them because air and nitrogen. There's only so many types of leak detection Solutions that can even see those gases, right?

⁓ OGI is not going to see it. FID is not going to see them. You're stuck with soap spray. You're stuck with sniffers. ⁓ These are all contact methods. They're slow. They're tedious ⁓ and easy to miss things. However, we're gas agnostic. We don't care what the gas is. So nitrogen, air, and for us, they say 30 to 50 psi is a low pressure.

Travis McCaughey (28:08)
Hmm.

Daniel Moseley (28:31)
For us where one to two PSI pressure is our low end, 30 to 50 PSI is screaming. So for us, that is our sweet spot. We're great with that. And anything higher than that is just icing on the cake. So we're very strong for turnarounds, for commissioning, for startups, for things of that nature, specifically because we can see things at low pressures.

Travis McCaughey (28:37)
Yeah.

Is there ⁓ a high pressure range where the sensor might become oversaturated like there is with a handheld gas detector?

Daniel Moseley (29:11)
There is a point where there is a bit of a plateau ⁓ in terms of the way that the turbulence can come out. It's going to largely also depend on because it's not just the pressure behind it. It's also the flow rate and also the leak shape. How much is that leak able to capable of even emitting out no matter the pressure behind it? So the leak shape.

Travis McCaughey (29:38)
Yeah.

Daniel Moseley (29:40)
plays a part in that as well. And there does tend to be kind of a plateau area. ⁓ So far, we haven't seen any issues with gas leaks of any size, just about oversaturating our camera. ⁓ We have seen oversaturation with other things, mostly in electronics. ⁓ But this isn't, ⁓ it's not an application for oil and gas or for chemical refineries or anything like that. That's more

we'll say on the public sector side, And on that side of things, ⁓ they're looking for vastly different things and there there's some different tricks.

Travis McCaughey (30:19)
Okay.

Daniel Moseley (30:21)
⁓ But to your point, I will say that there does come a point where our quantification will only be able to give you a... and it's above this much as opposed to ⁓ being as reliable at the higher ends. ⁓ But as far as ⁓ being over saturated by the sound, ⁓ we haven't run into that.

into that issue so far.

show you where we are across the US ⁓ and across the world. ⁓ So we have our camera in the hands of quite a few people, ⁓ not just Shell Energy, but also Shell itself. ⁓ And in fact, I don't know if you have

had the chance to see on, ⁓ for example, we had on LinkedIn. ⁓ If you're familiar with Mythbusters, one of their co-hosts, Katie Byron, featured our camera ⁓ on Shell's Vito offshore platform not too long ago. So that was.

Travis McCaughey (31:29)
I

saw that episode. totally, I must have missed that.

Daniel Moseley (31:33)
⁓ That wasn't on Mythbusters. I think she was doing ⁓ some other documentary specifically on Shell's ⁓ processing and on the upstream side. So they were on the offshore veto platform for Shell and showcasing our camera there. We actually had a client who reached out because they saw our camera on that show and didn't know that the technology existed.

Travis McCaughey (32:01)
interesting.

Daniel Moseley (32:03)
⁓ But we're all over the place. Chevron, ⁓ we're Phillips 66, ⁓ we're in ⁓ ConocoPhillips, ⁓ Erlekied, Lindy, ⁓ Shell and Shell Energy, quite a few different places. One of our other bigger areas is in hydrogen ⁓ manufacture, storage, ⁓ and hydrogen refueling stations.

Because right now our technology is the only technology that can detect and pinpoint hydrogen leaks from a distance. There are other technologies that can detect it as long as it's got contact. We're the only ones at a distance.

Travis McCaughey (32:46)
Yeah, that was one of the other things that's kind of intrigued me, because when you do these large construction projects, from what I understand, they're leak checked at a construction yard. And this would be great tech for that to address some of these module leaks before they even get out into the field.

Daniel Moseley (33:14)
OK. So they're pressure testing it before it's sent out ⁓ and ensuring. Yeah, that would be, I mean, that sounds essentially ⁓ like a turnaround or a startup, right? ⁓ So yeah, absolutely. Because. ⁓

Travis McCaughey (33:21)
Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. Right.

Yeah, you wouldn't have to

feed it. You wouldn't have to expose people to some hazardous gas potentially, you know, before again, it gets there or you're doing a turnaround or something. If you're purging or pressuring with nitrogen or something, I mean, not that that can't be hazardous as well, but less hazardous in some regard than a feedstock or some.

Daniel Moseley (33:55)
Or even if you're just trying to save on gases. So we've had some clients in the aerospace industry that were using helium for some of their systems, for example, specifically because their only solution at the time was helium sniffers to find their leaks and find some of these larger, more transient leaks, smaller, more transient leaks. And because they didn't have things that were capable of

detecting air leaks and they couldn't use soap spray for different reasons, ⁓ for contact reasons. Once they got our camera and did a lot of testing with that to ⁓ find out just what our limitations were, they discovered that it was good enough that they could eliminate helium and just feed in air ⁓ or nitrogen and then still be able to capture the leaks and ⁓ reduce them.

to the level that they needed. So now they're saving on helium, right? ⁓ Cost savings. So not only ⁓ safety, but also cost savings in some cases.

Travis McCaughey (34:57)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Is this like, ⁓ could this be fixed mounted inside of a plant? that something that people do? I mean, right now the detector is handheld, but just in my head, like you talked about, like flame detection and stuff, would this be a secondary to that almost? Or could you use it as primary detection and set like fixed mounted?

Daniel Moseley (35:32)
So that's a great question. As a matter of fact, we have a fixed detector ⁓ that has only just been released in Europe, and it's pending release in the US. ⁓ And ⁓ right now, what we're kind of targeting for our primary applications on there, ⁓ things such as hydrogen refueling stations and ⁓ transport and things of that nature, where you've got constant

⁓ transfer of hydrogen from line to line and things where you want to make absolutely sure none of that is leaking for safety reasons, right? ⁓ But obviously there are other applications and other implications for utilizing the fixed unit as well as a continuous monitoring solution ⁓ that can tap into your existing systems and alarm systems and be able to

Travis McCaughey (36:09)
Yeah.

Daniel Moseley (36:28)
You know, we can set thresholds ⁓ and ⁓ how we want it to alarm, as well as zone out areas that may have different thresholds, or maybe you just aren't interested in them at all. We can zone some of it out. Think of it kind of like ⁓ your doorbell camera. I don't want people just walking on the sidewalk to always set it off and send me an alert. So I just zone that spot out of my camera, and then I've just got the spot right in front of my door.

We have that capability with our fixed solution as well. What we're targeting in the US for that is ⁓ probably quarter four end of the year for ⁓ release of that. We ⁓ do have some soft testing going on right now with it. ⁓ It's, for example, being evaluated by the National Resources Energy Lab out in Denver. ⁓ And there are some others that are evaluating our fixed solutions as well ⁓ that are

raring up and we're gathering data to ensure that we have the most optimal solution for everybody and have everything ready to go. ⁓ You can actually see on ⁓ our LinkedIn pages two things. One, you can see it being utilized at the 24 Lamans race ⁓ at one of their hydrogen refueling stations because they had a couple of hydrogen cars that they were showcasing there. ⁓

Travis McCaughey (37:53)
Okay.

Daniel Moseley (37:54)
And also you will find that on the software side and ⁓ where we are processing that information, we're partnering with Emerson. And we had one of their technology directors come out to our site in Zurich not too long ago, pictures of that, in fact, for our fixed solution on our LinkedIn page as well. So to your point, yeah, we've been thinking about it a while. We've certainly gotten those questions.

We have developed a solution and we are in the process of dotting the I's, crossing the T's to make sure that everything is ready to go for ⁓ launch in the US. You won't see it on the website yet because we're not quite there, but we're almost there. So it is coming.

Travis McCaughey (38:44)
Okay, interesting. Yeah, that'll be cool.

Daniel Moseley (38:49)
And then where we're being used, again, offshore facilities. I mentioned Shell's Veto platform utilizing our, and this is by the way, all of these examples specifically are for the portable. You can imagine some of its use on the fixed site as well, but just as an FYI, the examples I'm showing are of our portable point inspection device, if you will. Being used on offshore.

small leaks, large leaks, you want to make sure that you're both safe as well as ⁓ efficient. And ⁓ that's where we come in. In midstream, we're used a lot ⁓ on well heads, pressure reducing stations, ⁓ things of that nature where you've got storage. We are currently being used all across ⁓ the Midwest ⁓ as well as up in ⁓

central Canada, Alberta, the Texas of Canada, if you will, for specifically in the midstream side, ⁓ very ⁓ widely distributed in the midstream side for ⁓ making sure that their methane emissions are kept in check. And CO2 emissions as well, because we have a lot of CO2 storage ⁓ sites that are interested in making sure that they are ⁓

Travis McCaughey (39:50)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Daniel Moseley (40:17)
keeping those emissions in check as well. ⁓ Refineries, that's kind of the bread and butter, right? Because you're looking at such a web of piping ⁓ and so many miles of it. ⁓ Speed in efficiency and pinpointing, they are all key to being able to find leaks and staying on top of them for both maintenance, for reliability, for operations, but also on the turnaround and ⁓ startup and commissioning side of things.

So downstream is a very strong ⁓ area for us.

Travis McCaughey (40:52)
you

Daniel Moseley (40:53)
⁓ And again, speaking to the fact that it doesn't matter what the gas is for us because we're not looking at the gas. We're listening to the sound of the turbulence from that leak. ⁓ Methane obviously is a big one that everybody wants to keep a side of and looking at these images where you can see the indicator on the screen, the little targets there. If I look at that and you look at that, we're seeing the same thing, right? Interpretation is

vastly easier on our camera than it is for, OGI. And it's not, to say that OGI is a great... I'm an engineer. I love having any tool in my belt, right? I'm a scientist. If I can capture any kind of technology and play with it, I love it. And I love OGI. ⁓ If it comes to being speedy and efficient and having easy interpretation for everybody,

I would probably have to go with ⁓ ultrasound imaging because of its ease of use, the fact that I can put it in your hands. And we have examples of this where we've put the camera in a client's hands before he hardly knew anything about it. And we took them on demo walks ⁓ just for 45 minutes around their facility, just randomly. And they found leaks they didn't know they had. And we never taught them or trained them how to use it. So it's

What I like to tell people because I also train clients ⁓ on the use of the camera once they've purchased, the training is more for the tricky stuff. If you pick up a camera, turn it on, and you point, about 80 % of the leaks that the camera is capable of detecting, you're going to find them on your own. No training needed.

Travis McCaughey (42:38)
Hmm.

Daniel Moseley (42:39)
The other 20 % where it's trickier and there are some adjustments that might need to be made and you need to know a little bit about how the camera works in order to make it sing, that's where the training comes in to help you get the remainder of those leaks that are a little bit trickier and may require a little optimization of the camera. To get some of those smaller transient leaks, for example, and that's where the training comes in.

Travis McCaughey (43:06)
Yeah, I would think that with putting this in the hands of an employee potentially, they're going to know where their hot spots are, you know, or shoot just stuff that they're curious about, you know, like, hey, I've always smelled this off odor in this room, but I can't really find anything. Maybe it's not on this, but it's close enough that, you know, they find it adjacent to it or something.

Daniel Moseley (43:35)
And that's actually, in fact, ⁓ we've got plenty of examples of that success stories of that where clients, you you could smell a methane leak and you knew something was there and they were constantly looking at this skid in this system because it was the most obvious ⁓ choice of where the methane leak might be coming from. They got our camera, started looking, still weren't finding it on that skid. Somebody turned around and looked on an opposite side.

And lo and behold, there was a methane leak on a line that nobody even suspected had it. And that's where it was coming from.

So, and again, it's just a factor of what we're listening to is the turbulence that's coming from a leak. That turbulence, it happens in both directions. It can come from the outside in and the inside out. So vacuum leaks are a big area for us. It's one of the other reasons why not only we're in composites and in the International Space Station, but we're also in a lot of nuclear sites.

⁓ because in nuclear sites, ⁓ besides their regular gas leaks of hydrogen and air and nitrogen and some of those others, there are a lot of, we'll say double wall shielding containment, right? Which they keep under negative pressure in order to keep what's inside from getting out, right? And it's double walled. But sometimes ⁓ seals on those double walls fail or ⁓ something happens and you've got a leak there and they need to know about it.

and they're monitoring that pressure ⁓ increase over time and they realize this ⁓ thing's getting worse and getting bigger. And their solutions are not ⁓ always optimal. Now, sometimes those double-walled containments are small enough that they can get away with using shaving cream or smoke to be able to find their leaks. But sometimes you've got very tall, 30-foot kind of containers or something along those lines where

how are you gonna reach that? And then if you've got airflow through your area, the smoke's not a great option. ⁓ So with our camera, they're capable of finding those vacuum leaks from a distance, just point up or down or wherever it is, and they can see it even at that distance. We've got people in refineries who are looking at towers where they've got vacuum leaks up three stories, ⁓ and they're able to find us that way instead of.

Travis McCaughey (45:46)
Hmm.

Daniel Moseley (46:08)
taking out their can of shaving cream and then trying to climb up there, right?

Travis McCaughey (46:14)
All right.

Daniel Moseley (46:14)
dangerous one and you want to be careful with that. ⁓ And being capable of finding your hydrogen leaks both from a distance but also as quickly and pinpointing as possible, that's key. A lot of hydrogen facilities or facilities that have hydrogen storage or production, things of that nature, they're going to have other solutions too. And we certainly want to make sure they have as many solutions as possible because hydrogen is a dangerous thing.

Travis McCaughey (46:17)
you

Daniel Moseley (46:40)
and you don't want any gap to be missed. ⁓ Most of their solutions tend to be ⁓ either point contact solutions or there are other acoustic solutions as well. There are UGLDs. So for example, these types of detections are also acoustic based, but what they do is they produce basically this dome of acoustic listening.

Travis McCaughey (46:42)
Yeah.

Daniel Moseley (47:08)
⁓ where they're listening within this specific radius and they've got their set background for ambient noise. And then if they hear something that exceeds that for a certain period of time within that radius, they suspect and, and, and alarm that they've got a leak, but they haven't pinpointed it. They've only been able to tell you it's within this radius. So you can get three or four of them together and kind of triangulate a smaller area.

But you're still only in an area, I haven't pinpointed that, hey, it's on this flange, hey, it's on this connector, hey, it's on this ⁓ crack in a weld. That's far more valid. It's still valid to ⁓ be able to narrow down your area where a hydrogen leak is or some other leak. It's just as or far more valuable to be able to pinpoint precisely where it is.

Travis McCaughey (48:08)
Yeah. Yeah, and it sounds like with that too, that there's some setup costs and everything as well. It's a training. Yeah.

Daniel Moseley (48:15)
Correct.

And then, because you're just listening and you're not visualizing it and pinpointing it, do you know ⁓ whether what you're hearing is an actual leak? Or is it something else that's producing ultrasound? You don't know. ⁓ The idea behind us is also ⁓ we try to make it so that we're not only able and capable of inspecting, but also reportable ⁓ if needed.

Travis McCaughey (48:32)
Mm-hmm.

Daniel Moseley (48:48)
So we can capture both picture and video of the leaks that ⁓ you ⁓ would like to capture and report. ⁓ We can document that information, produce notes and annotations on what you're looking at and how much you're looking at ⁓ right there on the field. And then we can then transfer that and upload that onto Reporting Cloudware, where you can create

a very easy report that you can share around your facility. And the idea behind that was ⁓ we can share a report and create a report that is shareable either in a Word doc format that you can then edit to how you would like or in a shareable URL format where ⁓ you can also not just view the pictures and the notes, but also see video ⁓ and watch the video, full screen it if you need to.

and have it in a way that is secure, ⁓ that is uneditable once it's shared so that you're not having to share a 250 megabyte file full of videos and stuff for everybody on your outlook, right? ⁓

Travis McCaughey (49:57)
Yeah ⁓

Yeah. Hey, what's,

what is the battery life of this? Like you take out in the field, are you getting like a 12 hour, you getting 24 hours, you know, before you have to dock it or plug it in or.

Daniel Moseley (50:17)
So by default, the camera comes automatically with two batteries. You can purchase multiple other ones if you would like, but each battery is about two and under normal usage, about two and a half hours of battery life for each one. And I define normal usage as not using our 1400 lumen LEDs the whole time as a flashlight, which we have that there in order to make it easier to take pictures and videos in low light conditions.

I just wouldn't recommend using it in place of your flashlight. It's like any smartphone, right? If you've got a normal usage out of that, but the moment your power goes out and now you're using your smartphone as a flashlight the whole time, ⁓ you notice it drains much quicker, right? Normal usage about two and a half hours, Swagelok is telling us that they get about three hours. That's great for them. ⁓

Travis McCaughey (51:04)
Yeah.

wow.

Daniel Moseley (51:12)
I'm conservative. I'll say two and a half for each battery. And once you've gone through one battery, you put it on the charger. It takes about two and a half to three hours to charge all the way up. once you've taken the first one, start charging it, put the second one in. By the time that one's done, your first one's about ready to go. So you could continue on if you needed to.

Travis McCaughey (51:32)
Right, okay.

Yeah.

Daniel Moseley (51:37)
But they're not big, the camera itself, let me see if I've got a better picture of it. The camera itself is ⁓ really about, with the battery, it's about three pounds. So it's not that heavy, not that big. ⁓ The battery itself is not much bigger than your typical dual-drill battery. So it's ⁓ pretty easy, pretty portable. There's a...

Travis McCaughey (51:58)
Yeah.

Daniel Moseley (52:03)
There's a neck strap. It's a leather neck strap for the intrinsically safe model. So we're not producing static electricity, which would be an ignition source. And that comes with it to make it more portable, single-handed. So you've got your three points of contact rule. We are not going to violate that rule if you're holding the camera walking down the stairs. ⁓ And in fact, that has come in handy. We've actually had demos where the client was walking down the stairs with the ⁓

with the camera in hand. And on the third floor of their facility ⁓ and on the second floor, they could not see leaks in the piping that was ⁓ in the ceiling racks beyond that. But as they were in the middle of the staircase, ⁓ one of the things we were noticing was off to the side on our camera, we have this little peripheral ⁓ frame around the camera. And what that does is what the microphones hear

but the optical can't see out to the side, it will alert you that the microphones are hearing something in your peripheral view that you may not be able to see on the camera screen so that you're not missing leaks. Because our acoustic field of view can see, well, see here in 180 degrees, whereas our camera, sees in about 110, 100 to 150 degrees, depending on which setting you've got it on. So we're still missing some.

Travis McCaughey (53:14)
Okay.

Daniel Moseley (53:32)
some of that angle optically, right? So to make up for that, we have this little peripheral frame ⁓ where ⁓ it'll alert you if the microphones are hearing something above you, below you, to the left, to the right, ⁓ and tell you, hey, look in that direction, there might be something there. This client was walking down the stairs. He was halfway down the stairs, had the camera in his right hand, and he was noticing something on his frame to his left. ⁓

halfway down the stairs, turns to his left, notices there was a leak that at all the other angles while he was on the third floor and on the second floor, he wasn't seeing, but at this specific angle, he caught it. ⁓ And I believe it was a large nitrogen leak. can't, I don't remember off the top of my head. I think it was a nitrogen leak, but it was a leak they couldn't otherwise see that way, right? So having it single-handed that, and...

so that he could hold it while he's walking down the stairs and still keeping his three points of contact rule became very valuable to him.

Travis McCaughey (54:32)
Yeah, I think that just speaks to making the use of the device more intuitive, like you said, as far as giving the user some guidance of where to look.

Daniel Moseley (54:49)
Right. And it's, it is in general, pretty easy because again, he hadn't been trained. it was so intuitive that without any training, like he, he just recognized there was something going on on the side of my peripheral part of the screen. What is that? ⁓ Turns and there's his leak. You know, easy breezy.

Travis McCaughey (55:10)
Yeah

If someone, where are you guys based at in the US?

Daniel Moseley (55:21)
So in the US, we have our office and our inventory in Port Arthur, Texas, right at the heart of ⁓ oil and gas country, Gulf Coast area. ⁓ So if it comes to, for example, ⁓ turnaround on shipping a camera out, two to three business days is certainly easy to do anywhere in the US.

Travis McCaughey (55:25)
Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's what I was going to ask is like shipping one out or if somebody wants to buy one, what's the lead time on, you know, them getting one or maybe even what's that process to onboarding a customer, providing them training, getting them a detector, you know, those types of things.

Daniel Moseley (56:02)
Sure. So what we typically do is ⁓ when it comes to shipping, once they've submitted a purchase order, ⁓ we can process that within ⁓ about three business days. It's not hard to do that. We can do it quicker if it's really necessary and we'll have that shipping cost there for it. But other than that, ⁓ it's certainly feasible for us to do it

⁓ within normal ⁓ shipping day parameters. ⁓ Once that has been, ⁓ once we've received the PO, that's when the training engineers will start to reach out and say, hey, we're just gonna start looking into what's gonna work for your team as far as scheduling for training. ⁓ What I've found in my experience is unless there's some urgent need that the training has to happen very quick.

⁓ It tends to be that the training becomes most effective when they've had a couple of days to play with the camera before the training actually happens. Because at that point, they now have some questions and they know what to ask. ⁓ And things start to make sense for them. But in the case of urgent needs, we accommodate for that as well. And we want to make sure that the client is ⁓ as equipped as possible. So there are times where

Travis McCaughey (57:15)
Yeah.

Daniel Moseley (57:29)
⁓ where I've gone and trained clients before they even receive the cameras. And what I usually do is I bring an extra camera with me, demo cameras with me so that they have it on hand. ⁓ What our training entails is twofold. There's a bit of the classroom training, but I'll be honest, I'm not a big fan of, even though I'm using a PowerPoint right now, not a big fan of Death by PowerPoint. I'm more of a visual kind of guy and a hands-on kind of guy. ⁓ So that's the way I approach it.

Travis McCaughey (57:50)
Yes.

Daniel Moseley (57:59)
So we'll give them kind of the standard, ⁓ here's your best practices kind of information and what you can expect and what to look for in a classroom for a little bit. But then we do a field walk and not field walk, we're not only ⁓ just looking for leaks on there and ⁓ showing them all of the user ⁓ features on the camera, but we're optimizing ⁓ how would you approach this scenario in this situation

for your unique environment. Because as much as refineries may look alike, they are all unique. And they all have unique scenarios and unique sound backgrounds. we show them, we teach a man to fish rather than giving him the fish. So we show them how to optimize.

Travis McCaughey (58:49)
Right.

Daniel Moseley (58:52)
and recognize various scenarios so that they are able to do it. And we do it within their unique environment so it makes the most sense to

Travis McCaughey (59:04)
So this is a product that's gonna take.

You know, this is like a two month, three month for us to get the device or something like that. This is like a week. Yeah. Okay. Cool.

Daniel Moseley (59:09)
it takes less than half a day.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

Travis McCaughey (59:27)
Yeah.

Daniel Moseley (59:28)
no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

Travis McCaughey (59:40)
Okay, and all that stuff again is coming from the US. It's not coming from Europe because I know from my experience, well, not only tariffs, but ⁓

Daniel Moseley (59:46)
correct.

Terrace.

Travis McCaughey (59:55)
you know, delays or ⁓ language barriers, those type of things. Yeah, they just make it longer for you to get things, parts and whatnot. So, yeah.

Daniel Moseley (59:57)
Right, right.

And that was a very key reason for us to set up a U.S. ⁓ was ⁓ we wanted to make sure that our presence in the U.S. was strong and that we had inventory here, that we weren't having delays, that we were able to meet the customer at their site and at their needs and at their timing. ⁓ So we have, we keep thorough inventory at our site in Port Arthur, Texas.

⁓ And we are able and capable of ensuring that you get your cameras in a timely fashion.

Travis McCaughey (1:00:44)
Cool. And are all your regionals, are they, are you going through specific vendors or if someone's looking for this or is it like you have people kind of for regions that are managing it direct?

Daniel Moseley (1:01:01)
So we have both. ⁓ We have both our sales reps that are selling direct ⁓ and ⁓ are capable of doing it directly through the US and through our Port Arthur office and through the regional sales representative. But also we have some clients that, ⁓ hey, it's going to be so much trouble to put you into our system. ⁓ We have this group who is ⁓ already in our system.

Can we get them to purchase it and then we'll purchase through them. And so we can provide that kind of service and we do very often ⁓ do it that way as well. So both through our channel partners, but also through the clients ⁓ own partners as well. ⁓ We've had some that were just one offs because the client just needed something quick and they wanted to go through somebody that was already in their system. And even though they weren't necessarily a direct channel partner of ours,

It's still, we were able to work it out pretty well.

Travis McCaughey (1:02:03)
Okay, cool.

I am very I'm curious about it because You know the other thing that comes to mind is you're using a handheld gas detector like you said to not to detect the gas per se and figure out what gas it is, but Just to find the leak and if you can do that Basically faster

and more accurately. ⁓ And for all those different vacuum, air, you know, all those things, all those leaks costs come at a cost. To me, some of them being probably hidden as far as like air, if your air compressor sitting there running and running and you can't hear it because you have so much background noise, plus you got earplugs in. ⁓

I could see where it would be valuable. Is it valuable in my case for one area to own one or can you spread that cost out over a group? ⁓ That's something people would have to discuss with you, but it sounds very promising.

Daniel Moseley (1:03:17)
Right.

And we've had clients that approached it that way as well, where ⁓ there are smaller sites that maybe one department by itself couldn't afford the camera because they, or it was inconvenient too, because, hey, my P card only goes up to so much, but we've got multiple departments here. All of them can benefit and we all kind of share. And so once they put it together, ⁓ they kind of shared the cost and then shared the camera.

Travis McCaughey (1:03:52)
Yeah.

Daniel Moseley (1:03:53)
Because ultimately, like you were alluding to, what is the value of finding your air leaks and saving your compressor from running to failure? ⁓ Perhaps good. And if the compressor is big enough, ⁓ certainly going to be even more valuable than the cost of the camera itself.

Travis McCaughey (1:04:12)
Yep, exactly. No, think it's ⁓ hopefully everybody that's listening, you know, found your, discussion today really insightful and ⁓ man, I hope it was beneficial for you and hopefully people reach out. ⁓ We'll put some links to, I mean, what do you want to, what would you like to link to,

Daniel Moseley (1:04:37)
Well, certainly

our Distran website would be a great one. ⁓ And then ⁓ I can share my LinkedIn as well, if anybody was interested in reaching out, I can share that with you, Travis. ⁓ And then I think the last one I'll share with you is a link to the ⁓ EPA's alternative test method site, ⁓ where we are listed on there. ⁓

with our submission and it is public and the public parts of it are available for download.

Travis McCaughey (1:05:09)
Okay. Yeah. Like I always tell people, you know, I appreciate, appreciate you taking the time to come and have a chat. You know, all these podcasts don't happen without people taking the time and making them happen. So I really appreciate it. And this tech is, is really cool. It sounds really promising and I hope you guys have a lot of success with it.

Daniel Moseley (1:05:34)
Absolutely. the next time I'm out near, ⁓ out in the Alaska way, I'll, I'll send you a line and, and maybe we can grab a coffee or something.

Travis McCaughey (1:05:45)
Okay, yeah, cool. Thanks, Dan. Yep, you too.

Daniel Moseley (1:05:48)
All right, take care.