Mitigation of methane emissions at landfill sites in New England, USA

Abstract Field measurements of methane emissions from landfills are essential if one is to accurately constrain uncertainties in current estimates of global methane emissions from landfills and document emissions reductions realized by currently available control technology. Two experimental techniques for the measurement of methane flux from landfills, flux chamber measurements and tracer flux techniques, have been evaluated at a 24 hectare landfill site in New England. Agreement between the two techniques was quite good, with the flux chamber technique giving a landfill wide methane flux of 16.4 m 3 CH 4 min −1 while a series of seven tracer flux tests resulted in a mean flux of 17.8 m 3 CH 4 min −1 . Model estimates suggest that the installation of gas recovery measures at the five largest landfill sites in the state of New Hampshire and the ten largest sites in Massachusetts would reduce landfill emissions in each state by approximately 75%, resulting in a total emissions reduction of 65 × 10 9 g CH 4 /yr.