CEM - Abstract

Abstract Information :

In support of the French public authorities, Ineris has been working for several years to better understand the real levels of methane emissions from methanisation installations and thus promote a safe and sustainable development of the sector. However, due to a lack of data on a national scale, the production of specific data appears necessary to improve knowledge, establish effective prevention measures and reduce biogas losses. The MethanEmis project (co-funded by ADEME, Energie Durable 2017, and the French Ministry of Ecological Transition) aims to fill these gaps by looking at the emissions (fugitive and diffuse) of three voluntary agricultural methanisation facilities representative of the French fleet over long periods of time. In terms of scientific approach, the project is based on four axes: (i) monitoring of site operating conditions (process data and identification of situations with the operator); (ii) measurements at source to quantify emissions from channeled sources (discharges from cogeneration engines) and losses due to leaks (equipment, pipes, leakage losses, for example); (iii) 3-month environmental monitoring of CH4 in ambient air and associated meteorological conditions to quantify the overall emission from each installation; (iv) atmospheric dispersion modelling of emissions using a Lagrangian approach. The analysis of the measurement data with respect to the site operating conditions has allowed to highlight different singular emission situations of the installations. By focusing on these situations, the comparison of the output data from the simulations with the environmental measurements then made it possible to prioritize the sources, estimate the emissions from the various sources, correlate emissions and operating conditions, and finally assess the methane footprint of the installations in their environments.