Fugitive Methane Emissions from Landfills: Field Comparison of Five Methods on a French Landfill

Babilotte, Antoine; Lagier, Thomas; Fiani, Emmanuel; Taramini, Vincent

doi:10.1061/(asce)ee.1943-7870.0000260

Cited by 78 publications

(51 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…First, rough and/or irregular topography contribute to unusual wind currents, which often result in unusable data due to plume mixing and is given as a method restriction (Babilotte et al, 2008). Secondly, a method for properly defining the upwind surface area contributing to the flux (Goldsmith et al, 2008) for landfills had not been addressed until recently.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A variety of methods, such as dynamic and static mobile plume monitoring, inverse plume modeling, differential adsorption LiDAR (light detection and ranging), and radial plume mapping, exist to estimate the emissions of methane from the landfill surface (Babilotte et al, 2008). However, none of these methods has been sufficiently field tested to resolve uncertainties and develop best implementation practices.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Methane emissions from 20 landfills across the United States using vertical radial plume mapping

Goldsmith¹,

Chanton

Abichou

et al. 2011

Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association

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Landfill fugitive methane emissions were quantified as a function of climate type and cover type at 20 landfills using U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Other Test Method (OTM)-10 vertical radial plume mapping (VRPM) with tunable diode lasers (TDLs). The VRPM data were initially collected as g CH 4 /sec emission rates and subsequently converted to g CH 4 /m 2 / day rates using two recently published approaches. The first was based upon field tracer releases of methane or acetylene and multiple linear regression analysis (MLRM) A closed, synthetically capped landfill covered with soil and vegetation with a gas collection system in a humid continental warm summer climate gave mostly background methane readings and average emission rates of only 0.09 g CH 4 /m 2 /day flux when measurable.Implications: The OTM-10 method is being proposed by EPA to quantify surface methane emissions from landfill covers. This study of 20 landfills across the United States was done to determine the efficacy of using OTM-10 for this purpose. Two recently published models were used to evaluate the methane flux results found with VRPM optical remote sensing. The results should provide a sense of the practicality of the method, its limitations at landfills, and the impact of climate upon the cover's methane flux. Measured field data may assist landfill owners in refining previously modeled methane emission factor default values.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Methane emissions from 20 landfills across the United States using vertical radial plume mapping

Goldsmith¹,

Chanton

Abichou

et al. 2011

Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association

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“…The tracer release method was developed to quantify pollutant emissions and has already been used in a wide range of studies to estimate the sources of various types of gases such as methane (Babilotte et al, 2010), carbon monoxide (Möllmann-Coers et al, 2002) and isoprene (Lamb et al, 1986). This method consists of releasing a tracer gas with a known rate close to the targeted gas source when this source is clearly localised and of measuring both the targeted and tracer concentrations in sections of the downwind emission plumes.…”

Section: The Tracer Release Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Statistical atmospheric inversion of local gas emissions by coupling the tracer release technique and local-scale transport modelling: a test case with controlled methane emissions

et al. 2017

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Abstract. This study presents a new concept for estimating the pollutant emission rates of a site and its main facilities using a series of atmospheric measurements across the pollutant plumes. This concept combines the tracer release method, local-scale atmospheric transport modelling and a statistical atmospheric inversion approach. The conversion between the controlled emission and the measured atmospheric concentrations of the released tracer across the plume places valuable constraints on the atmospheric transport. This is used to optimise the configuration of the transport model parameters and the model uncertainty statistics in the inversion system. The emission rates of all sources are then inverted to optimise the match between the concentrations simulated with the transport model and the pollutants' measured atmospheric concentrations, accounting for the transport model uncertainty. In principle, by using atmospheric transport modelling, this concept does not strongly rely on the good colocation between the tracer and pollutant sources and can be used to monitor multiple sources within a single site, unlike the classical tracer release technique. The statistical inversion framework and the use of the tracer data for the configuration of the transport and inversion modelling systems should ensure that the transport modelling errors are correctly handled in the source estimation. The potential of this new concept is evaluated with a relatively simple practical implementation based on a Gaussian plume model and a series of inversions of controlled methane point sources using acetylene as a tracer gas. The experimental conditions are chosen so that they are suitable for the use of a Gaussian plume model to simulate the atmospheric transport. In these experiments, different configurations of methane and acetylene point source locations are tested to assess the efficiency of the method in comparison to the classic tracer release technique in coping with the distances between the different methane and acetylene sources. The results from these controlled experiments demonstrate that, when the targeted and tracer gases are not well collocated, this new approach provides a better estimate of the emission rates than the tracer release technique. As an example, the relative error between the estimated and actual emission rates is reduced from 32 % with the tracer release technique to 16 % with the combined approach in the case of a tracer located 60 m upwind of a single methane source. Further studies and more complex implementations with more advanced transport models and more advanced optimisations of their configuration will be required to generalise the applicability of the approach and strengthen its robustness.

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“…There are instruments for gas concentration measurements (Babilotte et al, 2010;Crosson, 2008;McManus et al, 2008) or even flux measurements (McDermitt et al, 2011;Hendriks et al, 2008;Tuzson et al, 2010) that are well-suited for field applications but that do not provide a 2-D-concentration distribution. Certain variants of direct TDLAS (tunable diode laser absorption spectroscopy) are powerful techniques for field applications, as no reference gas measurement is needed for calibration (Buchholz et al, 2014) they are based on robust, industrially available components.…”

Section: A Seidel Et Al: Robust Spatially Scanning Open-path Tdlamentioning

confidence: 99%

Robust, spatially scanning, open-path TDLAS hygrometer using retro-reflective foils for fast tomographic 2-D water vapor concentration field measurements

et al. 2015

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Abstract.We have developed a fast, spatially scanning direct tunable diode laser absorption spectrometer (dTDLAS) that combines four polygon-mirror based scanning units with low-cost retro-reflective foils. With this instrument, tomographic measurements of absolute 2-D water vapor concentration profiles are possible without any calibration using a reference gas.A spatial area of 0.8 m × 0.8 m was covered, which allows for application in soil physics, where greenhouse gas emission from certain soil structures shall be monitored. The whole concentration field was measured with up to 2.5 Hz. In this paper, we present the setup and spectroscopic performance of the instrument regarding the influence of the polygon rotation speed and mode on the absorption signal. Homogeneous H 2 O distributions were measured and compared to a single channel, bi-static reference TDLAS spectrometer for validation of the instrument. Good accuracy and precision with errors of less than 6 % of the absolute concentration and length and bandwidth normalized detection limits of up to 1.1 ppmv · m (Hz) −0.5 were achieved.The spectrometer is a robust and easy to set up instrument for tomographic reconstructions of 2-D-concentration fields that can be considered as a good basis for future field measurements in environmental research.

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Fugitive Methane Emissions from Landfills: Field Comparison of Five Methods on a French Landfill

Cited by 78 publications

References 6 publications

Methane emissions from 20 landfills across the United States using vertical radial plume mapping

Methane emissions from 20 landfills across the United States using vertical radial plume mapping

Statistical atmospheric inversion of local gas emissions by coupling the tracer release technique and local-scale transport modelling: a test case with controlled methane emissions

Robust, spatially scanning, open-path TDLAS hygrometer using retro-reflective foils for fast tomographic 2-D water vapor concentration field measurements

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