On June 25, at the invitation of Professor Tang Chaosheng of our center , Assistant Professor Fei of School of Civil Engineering and Environmental Engineering of Nanyang Technological University brought an academic lecture entitled " Methane Emissions from Global Domestic Waste Landfill Sites are Underestimated to varying degrees " in Room 205 of Zhugongshan Building.

Assistant Professor Fei has reported in-depth on his latest research results in improving the estimation method of methane ( CH4 ) emissions from landfills. Assistant Professor Fei pointed out that methane emissions from landfills are an important part of global anthropogenic methane emissions, accounting for about 10 % of total emissions, up to 50 megagrams per year.

The current first-order decay model recommended by IPCC is widely used in ' bottom-up ' emission inventories, but its results are significantly different from the recent ' top-down ' atmospheric inversion data. Assistant Professor Fei 's team improved the estimation method of the key attenuation constant ( k ) in the model by introducing corrections for different compositions and environmental conditions. These corrections can effectively improve the accuracy of methane emission prediction and are verified with atmospheric inversion results.

Assistant Professor Fei 's research is not limited to theoretical derivation, but also applies the improved model to landfills around the world, and finds that up to 200 landfills have significantly underestimated emissions. This finding highlights the urgency and importance of monitoring and reducing CH4 emissions from landfills as one of the most cost-effective emission reduction strategies.

At the conference, Assistant Professor Fei answered the participants ' questions in detail about his research motivation, data collection difficulties and future research directions, and demonstrated the important contribution of his research to global environmental protection and climate change response.

This lecture not only provides new thinking and insights for the research of environmental geotechnical engineering in our center, but also provides a valuable learning opportunity for the researchers in our center to exercise scientific research thinking and improve scientific research literacy.

Introduction of the speaker : Prof. Fei graduated from the Department of Environmental Science, Tongji University in 2008. He received his Master of Environmental Engineering and Civil Engineering and Doctor of Environmental Engineering from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 2011 and 2015, respectively. In 2016-2018, he conducted a total of 2 and a half years of postdoctoral research at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia. Since July 2018, he has been an assistant professor at the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering of Nanyang Polytechnic University in Singapore. Since April 2019, he has been the deputy director of the Waste and Resource Recycling Center of the Nanyang Institute of Environment and Water Resources. Since August 2020, he has been the co-leader of the Waste in Infrastructure Research Group of the Urban Solutions Research Center.The main research directions include : 1 ) solid waste treatment and recycling and 2 ) environmental geotechnical engineering. So far in Natre Sustainability, Nature Food, Nature Climate Change, Nature Review Earth &, Environment, Environmental Science & Technology. Geotechniq and Jounal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering and other internationally renowned academic journals published more than 60 papers.He was awarded the Bright Spark Lecture Award by the International Society of Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering at the 8th International Environmental Geotechnical Engineering Conference in 2018 ( 3-4 awards per 4 years worldwide ) and the Arthur Casagrande Professional Development Award by the American Society of Civil Engineers in 2021 ( only 1-2 awards per year worldwide ). In 2023, he won the Young Professor Scientific Research Award of the Engineering Department of Nanyang Technological University ( only one person won the award each year in the whole engineering department ). He is currently Associate Editor-in-Chief of Waste Management, Member of the 215th Technical Committee of the International Society of Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, and Member of the Environmental Geotechnical Engineering Committee of the American Society of Civil Engineers. At present, Nanyang Technological University has obtained about 15 million new yuan ( about 80 million yuan ) in research funds as the general director of the project.