LANDFILL GAS (LFG) FUGITIVE EMISSIONS ON LANDFILL SURFACE – COMPARATIVE TEST OF ON SITE ANALYSIS DEVICES

ISSeP has been controlling for ten years the gaseous and liquid emissions of main

landfills in Wallonia. The monitoring of landfill surface gas-emissions is usually performed with

portable FID analysers. Such devices offer high sensitiveness but measuring ranges are

sometimes too short for high methane concentration. It is why another portable device, based on

IR-analyzer technology (ECOPROBE), has been tested and compared to FID in several case

studies. Synthetic air/methane gas mixture has been used to verify the exactness of both portable

analysers. In a second time, the linearity of IR-device has been verified in its large measuring

range from high-rated LFGes. Finally, performances of FID and IR technologies have been

compared on “on-field sampled” surface landfill gas (LFG). The tests show good proportionality

and low detection limit of FID devices, but with low exactness and low upper saturation limit.

The IR device shows good exactness and linearity on a wide measuring range, but his minimum

detection value is higher than FID systems. This gap increases when analysing complex highrated

gas mixture as LFG. Despite this limitation, IR probe produces other simultaneous

measurements such as carbon dioxide and oxygen concentrations. These data are complementary

to methane values and useful for landfill surface emissions monitoring.