European Harmonization of Methods to Quantify Methane Emissions from Biogas Plants

The preceding discussion has described anaerobic digestion as a strategy to substantially mitigate anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHG). However, the overall positive environmental benefit of the biogas plant will, in particular, depend on net GHG (e.g. methane) emissions from the process itself. Robust and reliable measurement techniques are needed to quantify these fugitive emissions in order to reflect and improve the plant-specific process Efficiency as well as to obtain robust emission factor estimates. The research project “MetHarmo” aims at evaluating the performance of five selected techniques (on-site methods including detection of gas leakages and flux chambers; remote sensing methods including inverse dispersion modelling and mobile tracer method with either open-path Tunable Diode Laser Absorption Spectrometry (OP-TDLS) or Cavity ring-down spectroscopy (CRDS), as well as Differential Absorption Light Detection and Ranging (DIAL) measurements) tested simultaneously on a German biogas and upgrading plant. The study will result in a practical guideline, which may serve as a basis for a common European standardization of measurement procedures and data evaluation to generate precise and comparable results within the EU.