Evaluating the use of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)-based active AirCore system to quantify methane emissions from dairy cows

Vinkovic, Katarina; Andersen, Truls; Vries, Marcel de; Kers, Bert; Heuven, Steven van; Peters, Wouter; Hensen, A.; Bulk, Pim van den; Chen, Huilin

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.154898

Cited by 36 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…In future perspectives, the obtained results represent a statistical evaluation that will be confirmed in the field with direct measurements, utilizing innovative instrumental technologies like drone-based monitoring with specialized greenhouse gas sensors. Literature data support this strategy, as enteric CH4 estimates using the IPCC methodology (level 2) have been subsequently validated in the field through measurements employing both established analytical techniques [19,20] and innovative methodologies [21], ensuring a high number of measurements over an extensive and/or rugged area, while simultaneously reducing sampling times.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Regionalized estimates of enteric methane emissions from cattle raised in Italian territory

Notarnicola,

Spizzirri,

Renzulli

et al. 2023

IOP Conf. Ser.: Earth Environ. Sci.

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Within the framework of the Extended Partnership "Economic-Financial Sustainability of Systems and Territories" (GRINS Project Spoke 1, WP3), this work proposes a regional estimate of the amount of enteric methane produced by cattle raised in the Italian territory. These data will be used to create national and regional datasets that will be an integral part of the AMELIA platform and will be freely available for use by both public and private managers for environmental impact assessments in the livestock sector. To this purpose, the IPCC (level 2) provides statistical models capable of evaluating this parameter, considering population, daily weight gain, animal weight, type of breeding, and dietary intake for each considered breed. In particular, in the calculation of enteric emissions, 37 pure breeds with different attitudes (milk, meat, and dual-purpose) have been considered, whose population is significant (>1%) at the national and/or regional level. For each individual breed, six classes have been considered, considering age and gender of the cattle. In addition, 22 crossbred breeds have been added, 21 specifics to each region and one at the national level. Regional emissions have been estimated by considering the average population of each breed in the period 2019-2022, normalizing the contributions of the individual species in a delimited territory and/or geographic area. In this way, six contributions have been calculated for each Italian region, representing a statistical assessment of the emissions that will subsequently be confirmed in the field through direct measurements using innovative instrumental technologies. Overall, this analysis offers a comprehensive view of how regional factors, and the composition of cattle breeds can impact greenhouse gas emissions. These findings provide valuable guidance for advancing sustainability initiatives within the agricultural sector.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Regionalized estimates of enteric methane emissions from cattle raised in Italian territory

Notarnicola,

Spizzirri,

Renzulli

et al. 2023

IOP Conf. Ser.: Earth Environ. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…The UG MBA has been described in Vinković et al (2022). The total CH4 flux in grams per second (gs -1 ) of a source is derived as:…”

Section: Mass Balance Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…where 𝑣 is the mean horizontal wind speed, 𝜃 is the angle between the mean wind direction and the flight trajectory, 𝑀 𝐶𝐻 4 is the molecular mass of methane, 𝑛 𝑑𝑟𝑦𝑎𝑖𝑟 is the molar density of dry air, ∆𝑐 is the enhancement of the CH4 mole fraction above background, and ∆𝑥 and ∆𝑧 are the horizontal and the vertical increments of the integration plane, respectively. The background was determined as the 10 th percentile of the downwind flight CH4 measurements as in Vinković et al (2022). The total uncertainty is derived by error propagation, based upon the variability and uncertainty in each variable of the equation 3.…”

Section: Mass Balance Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Supplementary material to "High potential for CH₄ emission mitigation from oil infrastructure in one of EU’s major production regions"

Stavropoulou¹,

Vinkovic²,

Kers³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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“…Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are an emerging platform to investigate CH4 emissions from various sources such as landfills, dairy farms and natural gas compressor stations (Allen et al, 2019;Vinković et al, 2022;Nathan et al, 2015;Andersen et al, 2018;Morales et al, 2022;Shah et al, 2020;Shi et al, 2022). UAVs allow transecting the plume over its entire vertical and horizontal extent, by flying at numerous heights, compared to ground-based measurements that typically capture only part of the plume only at one height (Andersen et al, 2018).…”

Section: Emission Quantificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…UAVs allow transecting the plume over its entire vertical and horizontal extent, by flying at numerous heights, compared to ground-based measurements that typically capture only part of the plume only at one height (Andersen et al, 2018). Two different UAV-based systems were used to obtain atmospheric mole fraction measurements downwind of oil and gas facilities during ROMEO: (i) an active AirCore system from the University of Groningen (UG) (Vinković et al 2022) and (ii) a lightweight fast-response Quantum Cascade Laser Absorption Spectrometer (QCLAS) developed at the Swiss Federal Institute for Materials Science and Technology (EMPA) (Tuzson et al, 2020;Morales et al, 2022). A total of 125 flights (65 UG; 60 EMPA) were performed downwind of 43 different facilities (19 UG; 24 EMPA).…”

Section: Emission Quantificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

High potential for CH₄ emission mitigation from oil infrastructure in one of EU’s major production regions

Stavropoulou

Vinkovic

Kers

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Abstract. Ambitious methane (CH4) emissions mitigation represents one of the most effective opportunities to slow the rate of global warming over the next decades. The oil and gas (O&G) sector is a significant source of methane emissions, with technically feasible and cost-effective emission mitigation options. Romania, a key O&G producer within the EU, with one of the highest reported annual CH4 emissions from the energy sector (Greenhouse Gas Inventory Data - Comparison by Category, 2022), can play an important role towards the EU’s emission reduction targets. In this study, we quantify CH4 emissions from onshore oil production sites in Romania at source and facility level using a combination of ground-based measurement techniques. Measured emissions were characterised by heavily skewed distributions, with 10 % of the sites accounting for more than 70 % of total emissions. Integrating the results from all site-level quantifications with different approaches, we derive a central estimate of 5.4 kg h–1 site-1 of CH4 (3.6–8.4, 95 % confidence interval) for oil production sites. This estimate represents one of the highest when compared to measurement-based estimates of similar facilities from other production regions. Based on our results, we estimate a total of 120 ktons CH4 yr–1 (range: 79–180 ktons yr–1) from oil wells in our studied areas in Romania. This is approximately 2.5 times higher than the total reported emissions from the Romanian oil production sector for 2020. Based on the source level characterization, up to three quarters of the detected emissions from oil production sites are related to operational venting. Our results suggest that O&G production infrastructure in Romania holds a massive mitigation potential, specifically by implementing measures to capture the gas and minimize operational venting and leaks.

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Evaluating the use of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)-based active AirCore system to quantify methane emissions from dairy cows

Cited by 36 publications

References 21 publications

Regionalized estimates of enteric methane emissions from cattle raised in Italian territory

Regionalized estimates of enteric methane emissions from cattle raised in Italian territory

Supplementary material to "High potential for CH₄ emission mitigation from oil infrastructure in one of EU’s major production regions"

High potential for CH₄ emission mitigation from oil infrastructure in one of EU’s major production regions

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Evaluating the use of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)-based active AirCore system to quantify methane emissions from dairy cows

Cited by 36 publications

References 21 publications

Regionalized estimates of enteric methane emissions from cattle raised in Italian territory

Regionalized estimates of enteric methane emissions from cattle raised in Italian territory

Supplementary material to "High potential for CH4 emission mitigation from oil infrastructure in one of EU’s major production regions"

High potential for CH4 emission mitigation from oil infrastructure in one of EU’s major production regions

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About

Supplementary material to "High potential for CH₄ emission mitigation from oil infrastructure in one of EU’s major production regions"

High potential for CH₄ emission mitigation from oil infrastructure in one of EU’s major production regions