Hybrid platform for assessing air pollutants released from animal husbandry activities for sustainable livestock agriculture

Abstract

Farming livestock—cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and chickens—contributes to the air pollution of the atmosphere. Agricultural air pollution comes mainly in the form of ammonia, which enters the air as a gas from heavily fertilized fields and livestock waste. A reduction in air pollutants from the livestock sector can be achieved by reducing production and consumption, lowering the emission intensity of production, or combining the two. This work proposes an approach for assessing the air pollutant emissions derived from intensive cattle farming. For doing this, the animal feed, the animal behavior, and characteristics and the stable environment data are monitored and collected by a cloud platform. Specifically, Internet of Things (IoT) devices are installed in the farm and key air pollutant parameters from the stable environment (such as CO, NH3, PM1, PM2.5, PM10) are monitored. In this scope, a study about monitoring air pollutants is conducted, showing the most relevant platforms used in this domain. Additionally, the paper presents a comparison between the estimated and monitored air pollutants (AP), showing the fluctuation of the measured parameters. The key takeaway of the study is that ammonia concentration has a higher level during the night, being influenced by the ventilation system of the farm.