Dynamic data for determining the accuracy of four open-circuit respiration chambers designed to quantify methane emissions from goats

Respiration chambers are the gold standard technique for measuring methane in ruminants provided that their gas recovery rates are close to 100%. The determination of the gas recovery rate of respiration chamber facilities is a central prerequisite to assess the accuracy of the methane emission quantification. However, data of recovery tests are seldom reported. This paper presents data from gas recovery tests applied to an experimental facility of four open-circuit respiration chambers designed to measure methane emissions from goats. The experimental facility is located at Thiverval-Grignon, France. The recovery test was assessed by placing a known source of methane emission at six locations in each chamber successively. For each chamber, the gas from the chamber and the ambient air were continuously sampled by a Multi-Gas Analyser 3500 gas analyser provided with a multiport unit that switches the sampling between the pipe from chamber and from the ambient air every 90 s. The analyser determines the concentration (ppm) of methane by infrared. The data were further imported in an R script for calculation of the methane recovery percentage. These data are useful resources for illustrating the protocol to assess the accuracy of respiration chambers.