Presetting a low-cost IoT sensor network and a commercial sniffer for continuous, non-invasive monitoring of ammonia and greenhouse gases on dairy farms

This paper shows a foundational study aimed at the continuous monitoring of the main greenhouse gases concentrations in a typical Sicilian dairy cattle farm. Once installed inside the free-stall barn building, a low-cost IoT sensor network, designed and built specifically for spatial gas monitoring, was preset and pre-calibrated by using a high accuracy portable gas detector, based on FTIR (Fourier Transform-Infrared), as a standard measuring instrument. The pre-calibration activity focused on the gaseous components of ammonia and carbon dioxide. Moreover, a sniffer was mounted on a self-feeder inside a similar barn of a second Sicilian farm in order to monitor the exhaled breath of each individual ruminant. NDIR (Non-Dispersive-Infra-Red) technology-based and appropriately designed for measuring the concentrations of methane and carbon dioxide contained in the sampled portion of cow breath, even this device needed to be calibrated according a specific procedure.