TITLE:
Design of a Methane Monitoring System for Landfill and Duct Emissions
AUTHORS:
Federico Hahn, Gaudencio Grande
KEYWORDS:
Methane Detection, MQ-4 Sensor, Monitoring Head, Current Consumption
JOURNAL NAME:
Natural Resources,
Vol.11 No.11,
November
24,
2020
ABSTRACT: Methane is released from waste disposal areas as a result from anaerobic
decay of food. Methane causes more greenhouse effects than carbon dioxide so a
methane monitoring system is required to warn its release from gas emitting
environments. The low explosive limit of methane is 5% in ambient air, so gas
leakage is dangerous and can produce explosions. An entire head monitoring
system was built around a MQ-4 methane gas sensor as it is cheap and reliable.
The design proves to be flexible enough as it can measure CH4 emissions in ducts, CH4 in landfills at different depths and even in
cattle barns. The measuring system head consists of a suction pump, solenoids,
and a methane sensor. Measurements are taken 13 seconds after methane gas
sucking. A timing of 100 seconds is required
for purging the chamber before the second solenoid is turned-on. Devices
temperature during operation was sampled with a thermal Flir-One camera and
solenoid coil temperature was of 24.9˚C after a continuous operation of 30
seconds. As hoses for emission sampling become larger time for sampling
increases as well as energy consumption.