Summary

GRETEC, the proposed Greenhouse Gas Emissions Technology Evaluation Centre at the premises of the University of Peradeniya, will be the first of its kind in Sri Lanka for evaluating local, regional and international technological efforts for accurate estimation of greenhouse gas emissions from climate-sensitive environmental ecosystems. The GRETEC will constitute advanced experimental and numerical test facilities for simulating landfills, agricultural ecosystems, constructed wetlands and underground natural gas infrastructure with the perspective of developing optimal methodological suites for estimating local emissions of greenhouse gases. Equipped with cutting-edge instrumentation for detecting greenhouse gases and controlling environmental parameters, GRETEC will essentially strengthen the technical and technological capacity of the country for mainstreaming climate issues in the legal national framework.
COMPLTED SUCCESSFULLY, the high-tech GRETEC facilities will provide highly reliable experimental and numerical results related to greenhouse gas migration which will be used by the a wide scientific community across many disciplines for improving the mechanistic understanding of inherently complex fate and transport processes in subsurface.
Experimental and numerical domains within the GRETEC will provide ‘proving grounds’ for local and international research groups for testing emerging approaches for mitigating greenhouse gas migration. The results will provide an equally important insight for national policy developers for proposing future mitigative measures in controlling atmospheric emissions of greenhouse gases from national perspectives. The GRETEC facilities will further open windows for the undergraduate and postgraduate students in the University of Peradeniya, other local universities and collaborative international research institutes to work together and develop their experimental and numerical research capabilities with the aid of state-of-the-art facilities.

Objectives

1. The overarching objective of this NRC-funded research project is to establish a “Greenhouse Gas Emissions Technology Evaluation Center (referred hereafter as GRETEC)” at the Department of Civil Engineering, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka for physically- and numerically-based
   evaluation of local, regional, and international technological and methodological efforts for accurate estimation of subsurface migration of greenhouse gases.

2. The specific research objectives (RO) of the project include:
   RO 1: To conduct laboratory-based and field-based experiments within the GRETEC test facilities for measuring methane, carbon dioxide, and nitrous oxide gas emissions across four different scalesmacro (~ 10 cm), bench (~ 100 cm), intermediate (1000 cm), and field (continuum) scale (>105 cm)- under widely ranging subsurface and atmospheric controls pertinent to regional environmental conditions.
   RO 2: To evaluate the state-of-the-art macro- and micro-sensor technologies for GHG detection with regard to their reliability, sensitivity, repeatability, cost, and operational adaptability for developing countries.
   RO 3: To compare and contrast the classical (e.g., chamber-based) measurement methods against the cutting edge (sensor-based) methods in relation to accurate estimation of greenhouse gas emissions with the perspective of formulating an optimal methodological suite for local and regional
   applications.
   RO 4: To establish a complementary computational test facility within the GRETEC to numerically simulate subsurface migration and off-site emissions of GHG. The latest numerical tools for simulating multiphase (gaseous and liquid) transport of multicomponent GHG mixtures (greenhouse
   gas, air and water vapor) in partially-saturated and heterogeneous porous systems under nonisothermal (temperature-dependent) conditions will be evaluated in comparison with the experimental results to find the best combined experimental-numerical packages for local and regional applications. The numerical codes will be modified, when/if necessary, to better describe local (and regional)-specific conditions.

Major Equipment Facilitated by Grant