Methane emission potential of open dumps in Chennai: a case study

Monitoring of atmospheric levels of methane and other Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) holds great promise for the mitigation of global warming resulting from increasing radioactive trapping by atmospheric gases. Since, the direct measurements of landfill methane emission found to be difficult, the methane emission potential of the open dumps in Chennai has been estimated using first-order decay models such as TNO, LandGEM and zero-order model (EPER model, Germany). The resulted methane emission was around 33 × 106 m3, 36 × 106 m3 and 52 × 104 m3 based on the TNO, LandGEM and zero-order models, respectively. The results concluded that the methane emission from the Chennai dumps contributed to 0.13% of the overall global landfill methane emission and 1.3% of Indian landfill methane emissions within the years between 1986 and 2003.