Sensors (Jun 2011)

Remote Real-Time Monitoring of Subsurface Landfill Gas Migration

  • Alan F. Smeaton,
  • Noel E. O’Connor,
  • Brian Corcoran,
  • Cathal Gurrin,
  • Kirk Zhang,
  • Zhengwei Qiu,
  • Thomas Phelan,
  • Dylan Orpen,
  • Breda M. Kiernan,
  • Hyowon Lee,
  • Damien Maher,
  • John Healy,
  • Colum Foley,
  • Stephen Beirne,
  • Fiachra Collins,
  • Aiden R. Doherty,
  • Cormac Fay,
  • Dermot Diamond

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/s110706603
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11, no. 7
pp. 6603 – 6628

Abstract

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The cost of monitoring greenhouse gas emissions from landfill sites is of major concern for regulatory authorities. The current monitoring procedure is recognised as labour intensive, requiring agency inspectors to physically travel to perimeter borehole wells in rough terrain and manually measure gas concentration levels with expensive hand-held instrumentation. In this article we present a cost-effective and efficient system for remotely monitoring landfill subsurface migration of methane and carbon dioxide concentration levels. Based purely on an autonomous sensing architecture, the proposed sensing platform was capable of performing complex analytical measurements in situ and successfully communicating the data remotely to a cloud database. A web tool was developed to present the sensed data to relevant stakeholders. We report our experiences in deploying such an approach in the field over a period of approximately 16 months.

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