Soil and manure chambers

The Mazingira Centre is a full-service agricultural testing laboratory offering accurate and timely soil and manure chamber sampling to measure emissions. 

The technologies include: 

Our main method is the static chamber method (non-flow-through non-steady-state gas flux chamber method), which is the basic method used to measure the GHG emissions from manure or soil. Chambers can be sampled manually followed by air analysis via Gas Chromatography, or using one of our high-sensitivity laser analyzers (see below). Chambers can be custom-made to accommodate different GHG sources, ranging from soils, manure management, to floating chambers on rivers and lakes. To determine GHG fluxes of different manure management practices, we have several setups, ranging from lab-scale incubation jars, over mesocosms using buckets that hold 3-10 kg manure, up to large concrete chambers and manure incubation tanks that can hold up to 250 kg fresh manure.

Gas chromatographs	Gas chromatograph with liquid injection autosampler	Autochambers	LGR N2O/CH4 laser
4 gas chromatographs to measure CO2, CH4 and N2O concentration in air samples. Also used to measure biogas composition (CO2 and CH4)  from anaerobic biodigesters.	Gas chromatograph to measure volatile fatty acids in liquid samples from biodigesters, manure storage, rumen fluid, and incubation bottles.	18 automated soil-atmosphere flux chambers to measure GHG emissions from soils and deposited manure automatically.	Portable laser absorption spectrometer to measure N2O and CH4 emissions in the field.
LiCOR CO2 analyser	Picarro G2508 laser	Manual GHG flux chambers	Manure chambers
Portable infrared gas analyser to measure CO2 emissions in the field.	Two laser absorption spectrometers to measure N2O/CH4/CO2/NH3/H2O from soils and deposited manure.	>300 manual chambers for  field GHG measurements  from different land-use systems.	30 PVC chambers for 250 kg fresh manure to measure GHG emissions, leaching losses, fertilizer quality, and mass loss.