Controlled-Release Emission of Methane for Agriculture

CowBell Labs Engineering/Climate, 2023–24

Liaison(s): Dr. D. R. “Doc” Brown
Advisor(s): Mark Gale
Students(s): Allison Marten (TL-F), Andres Sanchez, Eli Schwarz (TL-S), Dominick Quaye (S), Jasper Wood (S), Mauricio Bravo Guzman (F), Tresselle Gatutha (F)

CowBell Labs aims to make agricultural methane measurements accessible and trustworthy. They require low-cost methane emission test standards to calibrate their sensors. The CowBell Labs team designed a custom mass flow controller using low-cost off-the-shelf flow sensors, discretized flow approaches, and feedback control. The team’s custom emitter covers four orders of magnitude of flow rates and disperses the released methane over a wide area to mimic diffuse agricultural emissions.