Authors:

David Flores

Date Created:

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About Paper:

Animal agriculture faces significant challenges in improving productivity while ensuring sustainability and welfare for individual animals to meet the food security goals of 2050. A critical issue in this domain is the high greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, with livestock responsible for over 26% of global GHG output. Ruminant animals, including cows and sheep, generate methane, a potent greenhouse gas, through the fermentation of ingested feed in their rumen. However, monitoring and measuring rumen methane output are currently complex and costly processes. To address this, we have developed a modularized power-scavenging sensing platform for real-time continuous measurement of rumen methane. The innovative platform recirculates rumen gases to measure methane concentration, while also providing the flexibility to incorporate additional sensors for parameters such as temperature and pH. Moreover, to alleviate the burdens of constantly replacing batteries, we include power scavenging from natural sources such as solar and kinetic energy. The novel scale-invariant design easily adapts across a range of ruminants, from goats to dairy cattle, providing valuable insights into rumen function and contributing to animal welfare. Through this research, we aim to advance knowledge of rumen dynamics while addressing the challenges of sustainable animal agriculture.

Source:

Purdue University / 2023

Topics:

No topics listed

Co-authors:

David Flores