Assessment of whole-site methane emissions from anaerobic digestion plants: towards establishing emission factors for various plant configurations

This dataset supplements the publication "Assessment of whole-site methane emissions from anaerobic digestion plants: towards establishing emission factors for various plant configurations" by Wechselberger et al. (2025).

The dataset contains primary and secondary data underlying the statistical analysis and reported methane emission factors. Emission factors were calculated as described in section 2.3 of the paper. 

Available files (UTF-8 encoded):

Data.csv (dataset)

Glossary.csv (column/variable descriptions of dataset)

The dataset includes plant characteristics and whole-site methane losses of 135 anaerobic digestion plants, covering normal and various other-than-normal operating conditions (155 rows). For statistical analysis, only periods during normal operation and plants with information on the analyzed emission factors and plant characteristics were considered (cf. supplementary information C of the paper). Consequently, the final dataset contained 109 anaerobic digestion plants for statistical analysis on the methane emission factor (% of methane produced) and 28 plants when analyzing the wastewater-specific emission factor (kg methane per population equivalent and year). All but one facility continuously processed feedstock without any post-rotting stages. Plant DE-MH_WP5_1 of the secondary data implemented garage digesters.

Data from three plants were collected only after completion of statistical analyses. These data were used to compare methane losses during normal and other-than-normal operating conditions. The respective rows are marked accordingly in the dataset (column “data_collected_after_statistical_analyses”).

Version v2 contains the final reference to the publication Wechselberger et al. (2025). The data are the same as in version v1.