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Development of a Mobile Tracer Correlation Method for Assessment of Air Emissions from Landfills and Other Area Sources
Citation:
Foster Wittig, T. AND E. Thoma. Development of a Mobile Tracer Correlation Method for Assessment of Air Emissions from Landfills and Other Area Sources. Presented at Global Waste Management Symposium, Orlando, FL, June 22 - 25, 2014.
Impact/Purpose:
Presentation slides (visuals only) for a previouly approved conference paper for the 2014 Global Waste Management Symposium,June 22-25, 2014 - Omni Orlando Resort at ChampionsGate - Orlando, Florida, USA
Description:
Information form the previously approved extended abstract A standardized area source measurement method based on mobile tracer correlation was used for methane emissions assessment in 52 field deployments at 15 landfills from 2009 to 2013 (Table 1). Tracer correlation (TC) is a measurement approach used to characterize area source emissions through concurrent downwind measurement of a tracer gas and the target source compound which in the case of landfills is methane (Czepiel et al., 1996, Jacobs et al., 2007, Mosher et al., 1999, Borjesson et al., 2009, Scheutz et al., 2011). Because the tracer is released at a known rate it provides an indirect measure of atmospheric dispersion at the downwind observing location and allows the source emission rate to be determined by a ratio calculation (Borjesson et al., 2009). In previous research, the required instrumentation measuring the part-per-billion levels of tracer and target gas at kilometer-scale downwind observation distances has been somewhat expensive and complex. Due to the cost and complexity of the concentration measurement instrument (CMI), the TC approach has been limited to research applications. Table 1. Landfill study site locations, year(s) measurements were made, number of studies (test days), number of transects, and number of tracer release locations used.Site Code Site Location Year No. Studies (days) No. Transects No. ReleasesCA1 CA 2009 1(1) 26 3IN1 IN 2010-2011 5(9) 100 3GA1 GA 2012 1(2) 9 2KY1 KY 2010 3(5) 58 3KS1 KS 2012-2013 5(15) 321 3CA2 CA 2009 1(1) 21 2OH1 OH 2010 2(4) 41 2-3OH2 OH 2010 1(1) 20 2-3OH3 OH 2010 2(4) 48 3OH4 OH 2010 3(7) 139 3IN2 IN 2010-2011 6(8) 149 2-3IN3 IN 2009-2012 11(24) 331 3GA2 GA 2011-2013 10(35) 443 2NM1 NM 2011 1(2) 7 2IL1 IL 2013 3(10) 163 315 Sites 8 states 5 years 52(118) 1876 -The United States Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) and Environmental Research Education Foundation (EREF) collaborators are investigating development of a standardized version of a mobile tracer correlation measurement method which utilized more affordable and accessible CMI (e.g. cavity ring- down spectroscopy) along with a novel acetylene tracer gas to provide a more widely implementable approach than previously demonstrated. Measurements were conducted in the field by typical users, under randomly-encountered atmospheric conditions during daylight-only operations. Data from these field studies are evaluated to explore factors affecting method use, emissions determinations, and draft method quality indicator (MQI)s. A total of 1876 mobile tracer correlation measurement transects were acquired over 131 field sampling days. This presentation will describe the preliminary data analysis procedures and a range of environmental conditions that form the basis for a standardized method. Typically encountered measurement scenarios that produce method execution errors are described, and the effects of method quality indicator levels on emission rate determinations and data completeness are discussed.