Case Studies
Case Study: Gas Monitoring at Landfills
Methane is an extremely potent greenhouse gas that has 80 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide. Given its massive impact on climate change, governments around the world are racing to pass regulations that require strict monitoring of its emissions and atmospheric concentration.
The industries targeted by those monitoring regulations are Petroleum, Mining, and Waste Management. The common denominator among those sectors is that they all operate major facilities in areas that have a limited telecommunications infrastructure, and are therefore limited to manual methane measurement using handheld sensors, a process which is expensive, time consuming and produces intermittent readings. In some facilities, continuous monitoring can be carried out, but it requires laying thousands of feet of cables to connect sensors to a SCADA hub, or using LoRaWAN wireless sensors which have a very limited range.
“We have no idea how we’ll be able to meet those regulations once they kick in.”
Senior Project Manager at a major landfill in Ontario, Canada
Spero Analytics’ continuous monitoring mesh network solves all those problems.
To prove that, we deployed a large gas monitoring network at a major landfill in Ontario, Canada to provide operators with real-time, cost-effective methane surveillance on-site with no need for cellular connectivity. The network ran continuously with 100% uptime, despite the landfill’s IT systems being offline. Data from the network detected a methane hot spot and generated a wealth of information on methane emissions at the landfill. As we continue working with the waste management sector, we aim to become their go-to source for gas monitoring and real-time, off-grid environmental surveillance.
Case Study: Odor Detection at Brady Road Landfill
The Problem of Odorous Emissions from Landfills
Though most landfills in high-income countries employ significant resources to maintain a green, visually attractive facility, home values adjacent to those landfills are 14% lower, on average, compared to similar properties in the vicinity, with the discount easing by roughly 5.9% per mile of separation up to 2-3 miles away. The biggest driver of this perceived lower property value is the fear of foul odors reducing residents’ quality of life.
The cause of these odors is a combination of hydrogen sulfide (H2S), methane, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) – gases which are released during the decomposition of organic waste and which create the characteristic “rotten egg” or garbage-like smells that can travel kilometers depending on weather conditions. In recent years, population growth and urban sprawl have brought residential areas closer to existing landfill sites, amplifying conflicts. Provinces such as Ontario, British Columbia, and Quebec report the highest volumes of odor-related complaints, with some municipalities logging hundreds of reports annually from a single facility.
Several high-profile cases highlight the severity of the issue. In the Greater Toronto Area, the Green Lane Landfill near London, Ontario, and the Beechwood Environmental site in Halton Region have repeatedly made headlines for persistent odors that residents describe as nauseating and disruptive to daily life. Similarly, British Columbia’s Cache Creek landfill and Hartland landfill near Victoria have prompted formal complaints and regulatory interventions after strong smells affected nearby neighborhoods for weeks at a time. Environment Canada and provincial ministries have fined operators and mandated odor mitigation plans, yet many residents argue that enforcement remains inconsistent and that fines are too low to drive meaningful change.
To address the problem, landfill operators are adopting new technologies, including enhanced gas collection systems, daily cover requirements, biofilters, and odor-neutralizing misting systems. For many Canadian communities living near these sites, the issue remains a frustrating reminder that effective, long-term solutions are still needed. As with most issues in modern facilities, the problem has more to do with a lack of data collection than inaction by landfill operators; landfills can be as large as 1,000 acres, so triangulating the precise location where landfill gas may be leaking, and knowing which way the wind will carry that gas is crucial to enabling prompt action to minimize the effect of the odorous leak. Without this information, decision-makers at landfills are left to rely on complaints to start the odor-hunting and resolution process – a process which leaves the residents frustrated.
What makes odor detection challenging
Detecting and quantifying odorous emissions from landfills is technically challenging because odors are not a single compound but a complex, ever-changing mixture of hundreds of trace volatile organic compounds (VOCs), reduced sulfur compounds (hydrogen sulfide, mercaptans, dimethyl sulfide), ammonia, and amines – often present at parts-per-billion (ppb) or even parts-per-trillion (ppt) levels. Human noses remain far more sensitive than most chemical sensors to many of these molecules (the odor threshold for methyl mercaptan, for example, is around 0.07 ppb), so by the time an instrument registers a reading, nearby residents may already be overwhelmed. Compounding the problem, these compounds are released episodically from different “hot spots” across a site (leachate lagoons, fresh waste cells, cracks in cover material, or gas-well leaks/failures) and are heavily influenced by temperature, barometric pressure drops, wind direction, and atmospheric inversion layers that can carry a faint plume several kilometers while diluting it below most sensors’ detection limits. Adding to the difficulty is the phenomenon of odor masking, synergism, and fatigue: some compounds cancel each other out, others amplify perceived intensity when mixed, and repeated exposure quickly desensitizes both people and some sensor technologies. Weather stations and fixed monitoring fences around a landfill typically sample only a tiny fraction of the site boundary, leaving large gaps where fugitive emissions can escape unnoticed until a complaint is logged.
Spero Analytics’ AirAware System at Brady Road Landfill
One of the most effective ways to predict an odor event (and address it) is to install a dense, cost-effective network of sensors directly where fugitive emissions are most likely to originate.
This is what Spero Analytics did at Brady Road landfill in Winnipeg, MB, a large landfill which is increasingly being surrounded by new housing developments. Though the active area of the landfill where waste is unloaded and compacted (often called “the tipping face”) doesn’t face the housing developments, the landfill has received a handful of odor complaints which operators traced back to their landfill gas collection (LFG) system.
This collection system consists of a network of pipes buried underneath the landfill to capture the gasses (mostly methane and carbon dioxide) produced by the decomposing waste. The system uses a slight vacuum created by a blower or pump to draw this gas out of the landfill through the wells. Once collected, the gas is moved through the pipe network to a central point where it is safely flared.
It was thought that the source of fugitive (odorous) emissions was from the above-ground wellheads. which connect to the LFG system and allow operators to sample the landfill gas and adjust the vacuum pressure in that particular collection well. In some cases, those wells can malfunction, leading to fugitive gas escaping and wafting over to the nearby residential development.
To help operators identify the precise leaky well before the odorous gasses build up at the nearby residential neighbourhood, we deployed our AirAware odor detection-and-alert system to detect any leaks from those LFG wellheads. The system comprises a proprietary mesh network of low-power sensors ring-fencing the facility which continuously monitor for methane spikes (which indicate a leak in the LFG system), as well as wind measurements on-site. Once a spike is detected, an alert is sent in real-time to the operator with the likely coordinates of the source, leading to a much more rapid response to odorous leaks and odor complaints from the nearby community.
Want to learn more about how Spero Analytics can help you monitor gas emissions on site? Reach out to us.
Case Study: Monitoring Rainwater Harvesting Systems
Mexico City, one of the world’s most populated cities, is currently in the midst of a water crisis that threatens the health and well-being of its 20 million inhabitants. The problem is particularly acute in peri-urban areas, which are largely disconnected from municipal water distribution networks.
Isla Urbana is a Mexican NGO which is helping solve this major problem by installing rainwater harvesting systems in homes and schools across the country. To date, they have installed over 3,200 systems.
One of the challenges Isla Urbana faces, however, is regular monitoring and maintenance of those systems. Currently, this monitoring is done manually by evaluators, who visit the installation sites periodically. Given the inaccessibility and remoteness of some of the homes where those systems are installed, this process is tedious and cannot be done frequently enough to detect problems with the systems. Wireless monitoring is infeasible due to the lack of strong cellular coverage in many of the communities where the systems are installed.
Spero Analytics is helping Isla Urbana solve this problem by deploying mesh networks equipped with water level sensors and rain gauges to monitor the performance of their rainwater harvesters. Through a collaboration with researchers at the University of Toronto, we hope to provide Isla Urbana with real-time insights on their systems, thereby minimizing the need for manual auditing and freeing their resources to focus on installing more harvesters across the country.
