SEASONAL VARIATIONS OF GASEOUS EMISSIONS FROM A NATURALLY VENTILATED DAIRY BARN QUANTIFIED USING TRACER GAS TECHNIQUE

Samer, M.

doi:10.21608/mjae.2011.102633

SEASONAL VARIATIONS OF GASEOUS EMISSIONS FROM A NATURALLY VENTILATED DAIRY BARN QUANTIFIED USING TRACER GAS TECHNIQUE

Document Type : Original Article

Author

M. Samer ¹^{, 2}

¹ Assistant Professor, Department of Agricultural Engineering, Faculty of Agriculture, Cairo University, Egypt.

² Research Scientist, Leibniz Institute for Agricultural Engineering Potsdam-Bornim (ATB), Potsdam, Germany.

10.21608/mjae.2011.102633

Abstract

Twenty nine field experiments were carried out to study the ventilation rate in a naturally ventilated dairy barn during 4 summer seasons and 3 winter seasons. The air exchange rates (AER) were determined by the tracer gas technique (TGT), which was the decay of the radioactive tracer gas Krypton-85, and the CO₂-balance was set as reference method (RM). During each field experiment, continuous measurements of the gaseous concentrations (NH₃, CO₂, CH₄, and N₂O) inside and outside the building and ⁸⁵Kr tracer gas experiments inside the building were carried out. The TGT was further developed by working on the gas release location and the calculation method. However, the TGT still overestimating the AER by 1.63±0.14 fold the RM in summer (R²=0.94) and 1.19±0.15 fold the RM in winter (R²=0.91). The tracer gas technique is a promising method; however, it overestimates the AER. On the other hand, the CO₂-balance has several error sources that depend on animal production of CO₂ which varies in function of animal weight, productivity and pregnancy. Therefore, the tracer gas technique should be further developed, where it delivers comparable results and is independent on the physiological changes. The average gaseous emissions through summer seasons, subject to the reference method, were 124, 538, 45610, and 28 g d^-1 AU^-1 for NH₃, CH₄, CO₂, and N₂O respectively. On the other hand, they were average of 64, 348, 42760, and 39 g d^-1 AU^-1 through winter seasons.

Keywords

Main Subjects

Agricultural Constructions Engineering

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