WEBVTT

00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:28.000
Okay, so a bit of change of topic for this last talk because I'm going to present you An innovative approach to meet and capture through the Charlie Project, whose aim is to reuse Gaza recuperation system developed first at CERN for gas detector

00:00:28.000 --> 00:00:47.000
For management of emission from Livestock. So as I'm saying, the project is called Charlie CH4 Media and Livestal missions And our goal is to develop a prototype for meteor emission capture in a burn environment.

00:00:47.000 --> 00:00:58.000
Which is, as I will show you in a few slides, one of the major source of meta and emission from human activities.

00:00:58.000 --> 00:01:22.000
The idea is the one of a reapply gas recuperation system developed to extract cf4 from gaza's detector at Cerna to the meteor reabsorption and this is an innovative approach because usually meteor emission are fought in Liverstock in agriculture in general

00:01:22.000 --> 00:01:36.000
Changing the habits of the animals while here we want to act directly on the methane that has already been emitted and is already in the atmosphere so improving the quality of life of the animals.

00:01:36.000 --> 00:01:50.000
It's a strongly multidisciplinary activity, which includes people working in different departments of the University of Pavia and Turin from CERN and from INFN.

00:01:50.000 --> 00:02:10.000
And so I will start my presentation just having a look at the global warming problem, which you have already discussed in previous talk, as you know very well in the last 200 years since in this industrialization, we observed an increase in the surface temperature of about one degree or more.

00:02:10.000 --> 00:02:20.000
Which is mainly related to anthropogenic cause and in particular greenhouse gas emissions, among which CO2, methane and other components.

00:02:20.000 --> 00:02:28.000
Metane in particular has an important role in global warming because it has a high GVOP of 28.

00:02:28.000 --> 00:02:42.000
And among the different sources related to humanity, we can find for sure agriculture, which, for example, in Italy accounts for about 32% of the world methane emission.

00:02:42.000 --> 00:03:10.000
The project, Charlie, as I was saying before, therefore wants to attack the problem of meeting emission from agriculture and in particular livestock emission, which is related to intake fermentation of during the digestion of the food by cows So the first thing the first track of the project is to characterize the environment of the barn.

00:03:10.000 --> 00:03:28.000
Both through simulation computational fluid dynamic simulation made with console and in parallel in situ measurements to identify the accumulation point of methane in the barn where we will put our prototype for the capture.

00:03:28.000 --> 00:03:50.000
Then we are working on the optimization of the methane absorbent. We started with test with the commercial zeolites But now we are also moving it to the development of a new adsorbent dedicated to methane exactly And then, of course, the development of the methane capture prototype with the testing laboratory.

00:03:50.000 --> 00:04:00.000
Let's start through an overview of the simulation. So simulation are computational fluidodynamic simulation that we want to use to predict the metering transport in the barn.

00:04:00.000 --> 00:04:06.000
And to identify possible accumulation points in which we will install later our capture prototype.

00:04:06.000 --> 00:04:14.000
The final goal is to simulate the whole 3D geometry of the burner like the one the selected Barna.

00:04:14.000 --> 00:04:28.000
Like the one on the top left picture. But to do so we started with a two-dimensional simulation in which the cows are represented as point-like sources on the bottom of the geometry.

00:04:28.000 --> 00:04:42.000
And we use this to the simulation to identify the best model that predicts the diffusion of a methane and its interaction with the atmospheric conditions.

00:04:42.000 --> 00:05:05.000
So for example, in the right plot, you see the results of this simulation with one turbulence model among those that we have tested, which simulates the speeds of wind one meter per second from left to right. And here are the consequent diffusion results of the diffusion of methane and the concentration.

00:05:05.000 --> 00:05:12.000
Once this simulation will be completed, we will compare them with the results of in situ measurements.

00:05:12.000 --> 00:05:27.000
Which are performed right now in five sampling points internal to the barn. This is an overview from the top of the barn and these are the five points from P1 to P5.

00:05:27.000 --> 00:05:33.000
In which we are collecting air through pipes.

00:05:33.000 --> 00:05:51.000
And these are collected through pipes is analyzed with a capas analyzer. Kapas means quartz enhanced photoacoustic spectroscopy analyzer, which measures the vibrational relaxation rate of the different gas pieces to understand the different concentration.

00:05:51.000 --> 00:06:10.000
And then from these analysis, we estimate the emission of the different gases through a method developed on purpose by our colleagues out there and applied by our colleagues of the University of Turin which is called the CO2 balance method

00:06:10.000 --> 00:06:40.000
These are the results of the first in situ measurements that were performed over the past year in the four different seasons. So here you can have a look at the value of the concentration of methane that we expect in the Barna, which is something of the order of 10 maximum of 50 ppm. So with some more concentration during summer because enteric fermentation is handled by bacteria so higher temperature allows for a higher production of mint.

00:06:42.000 --> 00:06:58.000
So let's say the main difficulty of this project is to handle with the solo concentration, which are order of magnitude slower to what we are used to collect with the gas recuperation systems.

00:06:58.000 --> 00:07:21.000
So the idea for the recuperation system, as I was saying, comes from cmslip chamber system, which includes a CA4 recovery system which will be discussed later in the dedicated talk by Marie Kristina later this afternoon. So I will not spend much time on this slide. And I will go directly to our

00:07:21.000 --> 00:07:34.000
R&d just saying that this system is working fine and is efficiently separating CF4 from the other component of the mixture. The main difference I was saying.

00:07:34.000 --> 00:07:38.000
Is that CF4 here is of the order of few percent inside of the mix.

00:07:38.000 --> 00:08:00.000
The absorbent, so we say the main part of the work is to find the correct adsorbent for CH for methane. We started from commercial zeolites, the same used for CF4 because as you can see from the left from the right part of the plot, the structure of the molecule is almost the same. It's very similar.

00:08:00.000 --> 00:08:16.000
So we expected commercial zeolites that are working for CF4 to work also for methane But in parallel, we are working also on the development of a new material dedicated to the absorption of methane.

00:08:16.000 --> 00:08:37.000
How did we select it and carried out our test on zeolites? So we started with a diluted mixture containing 0.45% of methane. We passed it through the filter with the zeolites and then we analyzed the output with a gas chromatographer.

00:08:37.000 --> 00:08:59.000
Everything is in a record so it's a very compact system and here you have an example of the chromatogram that you get at the output here you have the peak of the methane until zeolites are completely absorbing the methane the peak is not present as soon as the absorption is not efficient anymore you start to see the methane.

00:08:59.000 --> 00:09:25.000
So the saturation curve that you get for C is a first part in which there is no peak, so full absorption, then the breakthrough position in which you start to see the peak Then partial absorption and finally saturation, where what you measure with the ZC is the same that you put inside with the bottle so everything the cartridge is fully saturated.

00:09:25.000 --> 00:09:34.000
From here, we calculate both the volume absorbed at saturation and at the breakthrough. And from this data, we compare the different zeolites.

00:09:34.000 --> 00:09:47.000
And here you have the comparison between four types of zeolites that we have tested the two more promising are these two where the number Z5 and Z10 where the number represents the sides of the pores.

00:09:47.000 --> 00:10:03.000
So we moved on only focusing on these two. When you completely feel the zeolites and it is saturated, if you want to reuse it, you need to regenerate it and you can do it through two methods one based on the high temperature and the other one based on vacuum

00:10:03.000 --> 00:10:12.000
So we wanted to compare the results, the performance of the two different kind of zeolites regenerated in the two methods.

00:10:12.000 --> 00:10:36.000
Especially because vacuum one is more energy saving with respect to temperature so From this test, we actually decided to continue the test only on Z5 because you can see that the performance after the two kind of regeneration are more similar so vacuum is working better for Zentan than for Zent.

00:10:36.000 --> 00:10:55.000
For Z5 than for Z10. And here you see that after many cycle of regeneration and I've sort of shown at the system maintains stable performance so we are actually happy on the fact that the system continues to work as expected.

00:10:55.000 --> 00:11:04.000
Last thing, as the system will be installed in the bar now, we expect to have also other conditions like for example the presence of humidity.

00:11:04.000 --> 00:11:26.000
So we want you to be sure that we could get rid of humidity in our system. And we did that adding a second filter based on that three which is known to be very attractive for water and we proved that we could actually capture water and then again capture methane with Z5.

00:11:26.000 --> 00:11:43.000
So we were still actually able to catch the methane after having absorbed all the water. The only thing is that we noticed and uh reduction in the quantity of methane absorbed using a lower concentration of methane.

00:11:43.000 --> 00:11:57.000
So to summarize what I can tell you, I can tell you that with our first test, we successfully proved that we can capture methane with this system at a percentage of the order of 0.1%.

00:11:57.000 --> 00:12:08.000
We could prove that the vacuum regeneration is effective with our zeolites and also that we get total absorption of humidity using a pre-filter based on Z3.

00:12:08.000 --> 00:12:28.000
Then we found hints of a relationship between the absorption capability and the parts and pressure of a methane Or in other words, between adsorption capability and the concentration of methane in our input mixer.

00:12:28.000 --> 00:12:45.000
Which is something that is very important from our point of view because we need to go to even lower concentration of methane and this relationship is right now under study to understand which is the limit at which we can work.

00:12:45.000 --> 00:12:51.000
And that's all for me. If you have any question. Thank you.

00:12:51.000 --> 00:12:56.000
Thank you, Eli. I see Duane has a question.

00:12:56.000 --> 00:13:02.000
Hi, Laura. This is a very interesting talk. I sort of have two very small rated questions.

00:13:02.000 --> 00:13:21.000
So the first one is you've talked about this methane extraction But you have a farm on the ground and then this gas rises. So at what point do you extract the methane from the air into these zeolites. And then the second voted question is.

00:13:21.000 --> 00:13:28.000
Is that where the end of life is? Do you have to store this zeolite somewhere to keep the gas from escaping?

00:13:28.000 --> 00:13:41.000
Do you know what the gas escaption rate or how long the expectancy that the CH4 molecule will stay trapped on the surface of this zeolite is

00:13:41.000 --> 00:13:48.000
So I thank you for your very interesting questions. I will start from this second one.

00:13:48.000 --> 00:14:07.000
Regarding the extracted methane, we are considering two possibility. One is to, for example, when we do vacuum regeneration of the cartridge, we could, let's say, suck the methane out.

00:14:07.000 --> 00:14:22.000
And the storyte for our user but of course this is uh let's say useful and energetic advantages only if we manage to collect reasonable quantity of methane.

00:14:22.000 --> 00:14:44.000
The other possibility is, as you were saying. To, let's say discard saturated the lights and store them somewhere This is also something interesting for our colleagues from the University of Turin. They were considering the possibility also to use them

00:14:44.000 --> 00:15:03.000
To do that. We don't know yet which is the best solution because we are still at the prototype phasing. We are collecting very small quantity of methane right now. You see, we are talking about 20 milliliters.

00:15:03.000 --> 00:15:08.000
Because we are using 250 grams of zeolites in our prototype right now.

00:15:08.000 --> 00:15:23.000
So I cannot tell you right now which is the most energetic advantages, but both the possibilities are being considered and are actually one of the goal of the project is to understand which is the best one from the energetic point of view.

00:15:23.000 --> 00:15:45.000
And regarding he said, the other question, so where do we get the error So this is really related to the results that we will get from our measurements in situ right now the collection here for these measurements is done at 5 meter from the ground.

00:15:45.000 --> 00:15:54.000
So there are pipes which sucks the air from five meters from the from the from the soil.

00:15:54.000 --> 00:16:08.000
From the ground to analyze it. But if you have a look, for example, at this simulation, which is very preliminary, but anyway it's already interesting the higher concentration of course is closer to the animals.

00:16:08.000 --> 00:16:31.000
Because they briefed there and then also near the ground you have the the majority of the air comes from them So one possibility could be to suck the air from closer to the to the to the ground and then put the the

00:16:31.000 --> 00:17:01.000
Capture prototype outside so we just needed let's say the pump to cut to suck the air out of the of the barn and then separate the components But again, this is in evaluation I think we will let's say the project is more or less at alpha of his way right now. We already had good results in particular on the part of the prototype development and zeolite testing

00:17:03.000 --> 00:17:17.000
We need to finalize the the characterization of the Barna yet, I would say.

00:17:17.000 --> 00:17:18.000
Thank you.

00:17:18.000 --> 00:17:29.000
Okay, thank you very much, Eli. I hope this goes forward. I'm just hoping that farmers will also change their way of feeding their cattle because then they would not emit methane. But it's another debate beyond this beyond this conference.

00:17:29.000 --> 00:17:54.000
Well, actually, our colleagues in the University of Turin, they exactly work on that. We started our collaboration with them because they were expert on this point and they were let's say there is a stronger relationship between university and farmers around in that region they are really eager to learn to how to improve

00:17:54.000 --> 00:18:11.000
The quality of life of the animals, but also from the environmental point of view, I see that they are really open to make improvements so