Oral presentation and full paper at 3rd Renzes-Vous Techniques AXEMA 2019, Paris, France.

Measurement of Ammonia emission in practical dairy farm environment

Hannu Haapala¹, Maarit Hellstedt²

¹ Agrinnotech, Kalevankatu 12B A26, 60100 Seinäjoki, Finland

² Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke), Kampusranta 9C, 60320 Seinäjoki, Finland

Keywords

Ammonia, Emission, Measurement, Dairy, Practice

Summary

Ammonia emission measurement in practical farm environment needs to meet several contradictory requirements. The instrumentation has to be accurate enough yet economical and easy to use. Most of new dairy production buildings are free-stall type which sets special requirements to positioning of the sensors in 3D. Measurement locations have to be carefully selected so that they represent the flow patterns inside and out of the building. Sensors have to have suitable dynamic behavior and sampling needs to be dense if rapid changes in concentrations due to e.g. the effect of changing daily routines are to be detected.

A practical instrumentation for Ammonia emission measurement was designed and tested in one-week sessions in six different Finnish dairy barns during all four seasons. The positioning of sensors in 3D was tested. The sampling rate was set high to detect the dynamics of emission.

Results show how the instrumentation effects the obtained results. It was concluded that the instrumentation was feasible. It is economical yet accurate enough for the calculation of farm-level Ammonia emission. Further studies are, however, needed to refine the procedure of setting the measurement.