Design and Implementation of IoT-Enabled Device for Real-Time Monitoring of Greenhouse Gas Emissions, and Pressure in Anaerobic Reactors

Abstract

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and consequential global warming are grand societal challenges, and mitigating it requires improved control measures as well as advanced monitoring systems. Currently, many countries have set time-bound targets for controlling GHG emissions from various sources including the emissions from livestock, however, affordable GHG monitoring devices, which are usable in a farm and rural environment, are yet to be investigated. This paper presents a simple, lightweight, sensitive, and a low-cost monitoring device for determining the GHG emissions from livestock waste. Application results suggest that it can be easily deployed, and it uses low power for real-time GHG measurements, making it practical for using in rural and farm environment. In addition, it can be used for IoT based application. The device offers precise measurement of biogas emissions from waste in anaerobic reactors, which are used for trapping the methane produced by waste consuming bacteria. This pressure controlled device can monitor low level of biogas production from livestock waste. Through a series of experiments, we found that currently available gas flow monitoring system alone may not be sufficient for real-time continuous monitoring of low level GHGs emissions, particularly in smaller reactors, where methane production rate is low. The pressure controlled flow sensors similar to proposed here offer improved real-time monitoring of GHG emissions. The comparison between the gas production estimation based on this novel device, and actual monitoring resulted in $R^{2}$ value of 0.997 and RMSE value of 0.09. The monitoring device proposed here could assist in deriving the strategies capable of reducing methane and carbon dioxide emissions from livestock waste under various on-farm environmental conditions towards meeting the goal of global GHGs emission reduction.

Keywords

• Environment
• greenhouse gas emissions
• global warming
• solid waste
• IoT environment device
• decision support system