| Abstract Title: | Application and comparison of different methods to quantify methane emissions from biogas plants |
| Presenter Name: | Dr Tina Clauss |
| Co-authors: | Dr Fabrizio Innocenti Dr Jan Liebetrau Mr Torsten Reinelt Mrs Angela Vesenmaier Dr Marlies Hrad Prof Charlotte Scheutz Dr Anders Michael Fredenslund Mr Johan Yngvesson |
| Company/Organisation: | DBFZ Deutsches Biomasseforschungszentrum gemeinnutzige GmbH |
| Country: | Germany |
Abstract Information :
Methane from biogas plants functions as energy carrier and supplies renewable electricity. However, it is also a very potent greenhouse gas (GHG). Due to fugitive emissions and emissions from exhaust pipes or safety devices, the methane from biogas plants is emitted to the environment, where it has severe consequences, in particular global warming.
An important step to understand and subsequently reduce the methane emissions in the biogas sector is a reliable identification and quantification of the single emission sources and the quantification of the overall plant emissions. Even though the number of available studies concerning methane emissions on AD plants increased over the last decade, a certain measurement standard for the determination of methane emissions does not exist and, hence, it is difficult to compare the results of those studies.
Mainly, two approaches including several sub-methods for the determination of methane emission exist. With the first one, the on-site approach, the single sources at an AD plant are firstly identified and subsequently quantified. For the overall emission of the AD plant, the emissions from the single sources are summed up. The other approach, the remote sensing approach, determines the overall plant methane emissions by measuring from a certain distance of the plant. Frequently used remote sensing methods are the Differential Absorption LIDAR (DIAL), the tracer dispersion method (TDM), or the inverse dispersion modelling method (IDMM).
To investigate the differences between those different methods and to develop a joint standard for the measurement of methane emissions on AD plants, the research project "MetHarmo" European harmonisation of methods to quantify methane emissions from biogas plants (funded within the 9th ERA-NET bioenergy call) was initiated. Within this project, extensive comparison measurements of methane emissions from biogas plants were obtained within two measurement campaigns in 2016 and 2017, where six different measurement teams (including on-site and remote sensing methods) from Austria, Denmark, Germany, UK, and Sweden simultaneously quantify the emission rate of the same AD plant. Besides the measurement campaigns, another important task within the MetHarmo research project was the publishing of a joint document including measurement protocols and recommendations for the use of the different measurement methods to obtain reproducible results.
In this presentation, the MetHarmo project and the used methods are introduced and the results and outcome from the project including the two comparison measurement campaigns and a conclusion of the joint document will be presented. Additionally, an outlook and first approaches of the subsequent project "EvEmBi" Evaluation and reduction of methane emission from different biogas plant concepts (funded within the 11th ERA-NET bioenergy call) is introduced. Here, the evaluation of different biogas plant concepts in terms of emissions and a subsequent transfer to the emission factors (EF) of the whole biogas sector will be elaborated.
