Validation of methane optical gas sensors in a dairy farm environment****

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Valacta is the expertise center in milk production for Québec-Atlantic. The company aims to increase rentability and sustainability of this industry. They developed several technico-economic aspects of milk production to advise dairy farms. Valacta collects data and analyzes samples for benchmarking and decision tool for dairy producer. Many metrics are collected like food analysis, milk analysis, cow's biological markers and in the future environment metrics. For the last category, gas monitoring lack of a cheap and real-time solution. Presently, gas sensors are mainly infrared gas sensors that are expensive or electronic gas sensors which are not selective. Many gases play a role in a dairy farm like ammonia for cow's health or carbon dioxide and methane for environmental impacts of the industry and animal productivity. Valacta needs a cheap, real-time and precise solution for methane monitoring in dairy farms. The Microphotonics Laboratory at Polytechnique Montréal developed previously an optical gas sensor on chip. This project is aimed at the development of a packaging for our optical gas sensor in a rough dairy farm environment.