Estimation of CO2 emission in reservoir coupling floating chamber and thin boundary layer methods

With the growing development of hydropower projects all over the world, the excessive greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from increasing reservoirs have drawn public concern. While precise evaluations of GHG emissions are urgently needed, the widely applied methods including floating chamber (FC) method and thin boundary layer (TBL) method are unsatisfactory. In this paper, a new methodology of estimating CO2 emission coupling FC and TBL methods was proposed. Three efforts were achieved stepwise:1) the CO2 transfer coefficient was determined combining the measurements of FC method and TBL model; 2) a semi-empirical model connecting gas-water transfer coefficient and near-surface water turbulence in reservoir was proposed: 3) finally, since surface turbulence in the reservoir could be describe in detail by numerical simulation, integration thousands of discrete cells of local fluxes could be applied to estimate the total CO2 emission with an improved precision. Nine locations in Xiangjiaba Reservoir were selected as a demo study for applying the method, the CO2 emission in the whole reservoir was about 1.37 kg/s. With a deeper insight into the law of gas transfer and an elaborate consideration of the whole reservoir, this study is expected to provide a new approach and technical support to estimate the CO2 emissions accurately in reservoirs. (C) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

This paper proposes a new methodology for estimating CO2 emissions in reservoirs by combining the floating chamber method and the thin boundary layer method and using numerical simulation to improve the estimation accuracy. In a demonstration study conducted in nine locations in the Xiangjiaba Reservoir, the total CO2 emission in the reservoir was estimated to be approximately 1.37 kg/s. This study is expected to provide a new approach and technical support for accurately estimating CO2 emissions in reservoirs.