Tackling the ‘Moothane’ problem - cutting greenhouse gas from livestock

A new collaboration between scientists, engineers, industry and farming experts hopes to demonstrate how clever technology can reduce the powerful greenhouse gases released by livestock to help agriculture reach carbon emissions targets.

Methane, released when livestock belch and pass wind, is about 30 times as effective as carbon dioxide in trapping heat over a 100 year timescale.

The methane released by animals such as cows accounts for about 50 per cent of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions and represents a major barrier for the farming sector to meet net zero targets.

The new project, a collaboration between Durham University, sustainable technologies leader Johnson Matthey, University of Nottingham and NFU Energy, will test the feasibility of catalytic equipment to safely decompose methane in barn air, where it is most concentrated and preventing it from being released into the wider atmosphere.

The £250,000 project, partly funded by UKRI’s Farming Innovation Pathways funding grants, will build on existing technology and look specifically at how to adapt this to the agricultural sector.

If successful, the team hopes that this could pave the way for a new “farm-ready” technology which could have a significant impact on reducing the greenhouse gas emissions of livestock farming.

Dr Simon Beaumont, Associate Professor in Chemistry at Durham University, said; “Methane from livestock – or ‘moothane’– accounts for about 50 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector, and around one third of this is released indoors.

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