Laboratoire : Division M3-BIORES :

To monitor gaseous emissions, ventilation rate and gas concentration are the most relevant variables that need to be measured.

KULeuven/M3-BIORES is working on the problem of ventilation rate monitoring in livestock buildings for more than 30 years. Several patented solutions have been worked out for mechanical and natural ventilated buildings. The principle of the free running impeller was introduced by KULeuven in the early 80-ties and is now used world-wide and recognized as an international standard for ventilation rate monitoring in mechanically ventilated agricultural applications. Today, the accuracy of the sensor is 50 m3/h in the measuring range from 50 to 20.000 m3/h. The sensor is patented by KULeuven in 1994 and described in a number of scientific publications.

Also for naturally ventilated buildings several practical solutions have been tested out in the past years. These methods are based on tracer gas monitoring, acoustical sensors or model based estimation of energy and mass fluxes through a building envelope.

In monitoring gaseous emissions, KULeuven has a good expertise as result of different research projects since 1994. KULeuven was the first institute worldwide that started with high frequent (every 8 min) ammonia emissions measurements in field installations, resulting in a unique data base of 20 years of continuous monitoring of ammonia emissions and related variables. Agreements are made with different international institutes to share the emission data of different livestock housing systems. Partners of this consortium are :

- Universität Hohenheim - Institut für Agrartechnik, Stuttgart (D)

- IOWA State University - Department of Agricultural & Biosystems Engineering, Iowa (US)

- University of Minnesota - Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering, Minnesota (US)

- Purdue University, Purdue (US)

- Silsoe Research Institute, Silsoe (UK)

- National Institute of Agricultural Engineering, Horsens (DK)

- Università degli Studi di Milano - Dipartimento di Scienze e Tecnologie Veterinarie per la Sicurezza Alimentare, Milan (I)

To reduce the costs of emission monitoring, a procedure was developed to estimate emission factors from livestock buildings accurately and this with a reduction of necessary measuring days by 90%. This intermittent measurement method is now used by the Flemish government to evaluate the emission performance of pig and poultry houses in the field. Different other countries started negotiations further develop this procedure to an international European standard. (http://www.M3-biores.com/)