California Air Resources Board

Principal Investigator/Author: Corinne Cooper

Contractor: ChampionX

Contract number: 23RD002

Project Status: Active

Relevant CARB programs: California Methane Research Program, Landfill Methane Regulation

Topic areas: Climate Change, GHG Emission Inventory Program, Short-Lived Climate Pollutant Inventory

Research Summary:

Methane is an important greenhouse gas that is 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Methane emissions in California come from various sectors including agriculture, energy, waste management and other natural sources. There is very limited understanding on facility-level methane emission flux from major sectors across the State. At the same time, there is an emerging need to support quantification of facility-scale methane emissions centers around long-term, continuous measurements of emissions.

This project aims to further understand methane emissions from California’s waste sector. The research team will expand the database of facility-level methane emissions from landfills by including more facilities, revisiting previously measured facilities, and adding in near-continuous measurements from ground-based sensors. Target landfills will be identified from existing databases and by examining results from previous campaigns. They will do this by estimating methane emission fluxes of selected high methane emission facilities in South Coast, San Joaquin Valley, Sacramento Valley, Bay Area and Northern California from waste management sources, focusing on three landfills. The team plans to leverage ground-based sensors operated by ChampionX to provide year-round, near-continuous measurements of emissions at select sites. These sensor systems, called Systematic Observations of Facility Intermittent Emissions (SOOFIE) are custom-built by ChampionX. The SOOFIE system shows great potential but has seen limited use at landfills. This project will pair SOOFIE systems at landfills with coordinated overflights with the ChampionX mass balance aircraft, allowing researchers to better quantify the uncertainties associated with using the ground-based sensors to estimate total landfill methane emissions. 

Keywords: methane emissions, landfills, ground-based sensors, landfill methane, facility-level, waste-management, database, emission sources, continuous measurements, methane