CMMS - Summit Midstream Joint Development

CMMS is sponsoring a design project with Summit Midstream Partners and Dr. Denizhan Yavas, Assistant Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at LU, that is focused on mitigating methane venting from "pig" catchers in remote locations. Traditionally, high pressure natural gas was vented to atmosphere to enable removal of the pig from the catcher. Due to changing regulations, companies must now mitigate methane venting in operations, including pigging, which has led to expensive and time consuming processes required for pig catchers in remote locations. The challenge of this project is to develop a simple, inexpensive method to remove pigs from pig catchers while avoiding venting. Discussions among CMMS, Summit, and Dr. Yavas resulted in a couple of prospective designs that substantially reduce methane emissions in pigging operations. Dr. Yavas' team is developing a preliminary engineering design that, if deemed acceptable by Summit, will lead to commercial development of a design that will solve a common problem plaguing the midstream industry.