Sniffer Robotics enters Canadian market for landfill methane detection
September 18, 2024
by CM Staff
This past June, ECCC published proposed regulations for the waste sector governing the reduction of methane from landfills. ECCC regulations will require that methane concentration is monitored across the entire landfill surface and at locations where infrastructure is present.
ANN ARBOR — Sniffer Robotics (SRI), the developer of the SnifferDRONE unmanned aerial system (UAS) for landfill methane emissions leak detection and localization, introduces a partnership program, marking entry into the Canadian market.
SRI’s partner program expands the UAS technology to international customers by partnering with local industry service providers who fly the SnifferDRONE for data collection purposes. SRI manages the data and its transformation to actionable information for compliance purposes, or to valuable insights that help improve operations through increased gas collection, odour reduction, and/or fleet site assessments for internal benchmarking purposes.
SRI’s first partners include DroneXperts, headquartered in Québec City. Sniffer’s partners provide drone and environmental services and manage remote flight operations on behalf of SRI. Through this arrangement, SRI recently completed its first commercial operations in Canada. The work involved methane emissions monitoring inspections at landfills across Canada in five different provinces from Quebec to Alberta.
This past June, the Government of Canada’s ECCC published proposed regulations for the waste sector governing the reduction of methane from landfills. Similar to current US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) landfill regulations, ECCC regulations will require that methane concentration is monitored across the entire landfill surface and at locations where infrastructure is present.
While the new regulations are anticipated to become effective in 2027, assessment of methane emissions from each landfill site is expected within the next year via model or measurement-based investigation. There are two methods to comply with the ECCC Surface Emissions Monitoring (SEM) regulation. The first is a traditional SEM walking survey where a handheld sensor measures at-surface methane concentrations – this method is labour-intensive and hazardous. The second method is an EPA-compliant method known as Other Test Method 51 (OTM-51), using aerial drones to measure methane concentrations fed to the drone sensor from an umbilical.
