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.
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