Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CANMILK (Carbon Neutral Milk)
Reporting period: 2022-09-01 to 2024-02-29
The European farming is facing a great challenge: How to maintain domestic agricultural production while cutting down greenhouse gas emissions? Agriculture accounts for about 10% of total greenhouse gas emissions at European level. A significant proportion of these (around 54%) is methane, most of which is produced by rumination and belching by cattle. In the EU area there are around 77 million cows on 1.8 million cattle farms. Each of these is a tiny point source of highly dilute methane, but the combined contribution reaches to total 158 MT CO2eq. of methane emissions annually. The CANMILK project is developing an innovative technology based on non-thermal plasma. This will help the cattle farms to cut down methane emissions and achieve carbon neutrality by 2035.
The challenge of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions is that they are either produced outside in open air or, when produced indoors, diluted in high amount of ventilation air. This makes them technically difficult to tackle. The concentration of methane in the indoor air of a cattle barn is in the range of tens to hundreds of parts per million (ppm). Therefore, neither commercial utilization of methane nor the direct thermal combustion is feasible.
Currently there is no suitable way to treat dilute methane in animal barns. In order to reduce methane emissions quickly and reach the carbon neutrality by 2035, the new technical solutions must be efficient, have high potential for fast commercialization, and have investment and operation costs that are affordable for the farmers. This is the primary target of the CANMILK project.
The ambitious goal of CANMILK is to develop novel technology for methane conversion to CO2 which is less harmful compound with 28 times lower global warming potential than methane. Non-thermal plasma, a.k.a cold plasma, is today in everyday consumer use for example in fluorescent lamps and in ozone generators. The CANMILK project converts this technology to an innovative high-tech and low-cost solution to fight against ppm level methane emissions.
In working towards this challenge, the CANMILK consortium aims to develop a concept, technology and network that can have significant impact in the following areas: 1) a simple, efficient, and cost-effective equipment for methane abatement at the dairy and meat farms; 2) targeted overall cost below 80 €/T CO2eq; 3) targeted methane conversion of 90%; 4) a good understanding of the socio-economic and environmental feasibility of plasma-based methane abatement; 5) increased awareness of environmental solutions available for GHG-abatement in agriculture.
CANMILK project is organized in 6 Work Packages which have been carefully designed to allow the realization of the project objectives in an effective and timely manner and promote cooperation between partners. Besides Work Packages dedicated for Management, Dissemination and Exploitation, CANMILK has four Work Packages focusing on the technical development. The development of specific units will be carried out for adsorber, catalyst and plasma technologies. All of these components will be brought together to build a proof-of-concept unit which will be tested with simulated barn air. The techno-economics and modelling of the system will also be carried out.
The challenge of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions is that they are either produced outside in open air or, when produced indoors, diluted in high amount of ventilation air. This makes them technically difficult to tackle. The concentration of methane in the indoor air of a cattle barn is in the range of tens to hundreds of parts per million (ppm). Therefore, neither commercial utilization of methane nor the direct thermal combustion is feasible.
Currently there is no suitable way to treat dilute methane in animal barns. In order to reduce methane emissions quickly and reach the carbon neutrality by 2035, the new technical solutions must be efficient, have high potential for fast commercialization, and have investment and operation costs that are affordable for the farmers. This is the primary target of the CANMILK project.
The ambitious goal of CANMILK is to develop novel technology for methane conversion to CO2 which is less harmful compound with 28 times lower global warming potential than methane. Non-thermal plasma, a.k.a cold plasma, is today in everyday consumer use for example in fluorescent lamps and in ozone generators. The CANMILK project converts this technology to an innovative high-tech and low-cost solution to fight against ppm level methane emissions.
In working towards this challenge, the CANMILK consortium aims to develop a concept, technology and network that can have significant impact in the following areas: 1) a simple, efficient, and cost-effective equipment for methane abatement at the dairy and meat farms; 2) targeted overall cost below 80 €/T CO2eq; 3) targeted methane conversion of 90%; 4) a good understanding of the socio-economic and environmental feasibility of plasma-based methane abatement; 5) increased awareness of environmental solutions available for GHG-abatement in agriculture.
CANMILK project is organized in 6 Work Packages which have been carefully designed to allow the realization of the project objectives in an effective and timely manner and promote cooperation between partners. Besides Work Packages dedicated for Management, Dissemination and Exploitation, CANMILK has four Work Packages focusing on the technical development. The development of specific units will be carried out for adsorber, catalyst and plasma technologies. All of these components will be brought together to build a proof-of-concept unit which will be tested with simulated barn air. The techno-economics and modelling of the system will also be carried out.
Currently CANMILK has gone through it's first 1,5 years of the project. As the project will continue until autumn 2026, many activities are currently on-going and results will be coming in the later stage of the project. The major achievement of the this first project period has been the barn air measurement campaign, in which the methane concentration was measured in real dairy barn for two weeks-long periods both in winter and summer time. The produced data set has been unique and provides a basis for the technology design and techno-economic evaluation for the CANMILK unit.
Work has also been progressing as planned in the development of plasma system feasible for the operational environment of the barn. The key question is how to combine adsorber, plasma and catalysis to obtain the best benefits from the three technologies. This has required, and will continue to do so, continuous evaluation of the results and re-adjustment of the system as development work progresses. Meanwhile, the design of the proof-of-concept unit and building the system model for the techno-economic model have both started with full speed.
Work has also been progressing as planned in the development of plasma system feasible for the operational environment of the barn. The key question is how to combine adsorber, plasma and catalysis to obtain the best benefits from the three technologies. This has required, and will continue to do so, continuous evaluation of the results and re-adjustment of the system as development work progresses. Meanwhile, the design of the proof-of-concept unit and building the system model for the techno-economic model have both started with full speed.
As discussed above the major beyond the state of the art result of the CANMILK project thus far has been the barn air monitoring campaign. This resulted in a dataset of long-term changes in the methane level inside a modern dairy barn. There were significant changes in the methane concentration depending on many factors, some of which are still under identification.