Investigation on Gaseous and Particle Mass Emissions from Automatically Fired Small Scale Heating System under Laboratory Conditions

Abstract

This study presents the experimental results on gaseous and particle mass emissions obtained from a bottom feed pellet stove of 2.5 kW output in part load heat and 5 kW output in nominal heat. The experiments were conducted in a stove manufacturing plant in the southern part of Belgium. Two combustion experiments (A and B) in part load heat output and four experiments (C, D, E and E) in nominal load were performed at three combustion phases: startup, combustion and burnout phase. The pellet stove was operated in different fan speeds varied from 900 rpm to 1250 rpm for the combustion experiments. Experiments A and B were operated with low speed fan, C and D with medium speed fan, E and F with high speed fan. The emissions results include CO2, CO, O2 and particle mass concentrations are presented in this study. A performance analysis in terms of combustion efficiency together with different losses of the pellet stove is also discussed. The experimental results show that CO emissions obtained from the main combustion phase of the part load heat output experiments varied from 1215 mg/Nm3 to 1450 mg/Nm3, while in the nominal load heat output varied from 50 mg/Nm3 to 145 mg/Nm3. Also, the results show that CO emissions in the burnout phase from all the experiments were significantly higher than that in the startup phase followed by the combustion phase. The finding shows that higher CO emissions in the startup and burnout phase have influence on the total CO emissions. Particle mass emissions obtained from the combustion experiments operated with high fan speed varied from 10-15 mg/Nm3 respectively and were much lower than the required limit value of standard EN14785 and other works. The combustion efficiency obtained from all the experiments for the low speed fan, medium speed fan and high speed fan was 92.8±1.2 %, 92.4±1.1 % and 92.7±1.2 % respectively and satisfied the required limit value of the standard.Article History: Received Sept 12th 2017; Received in revised form March 17th 2018; Accepted April 26th 2018; Available onlineHow to Cite This Article: Obaidullah, M., Bram, S. and De Ruyck, J. (2018) Investigation on Gaseous and Particle Mass Emissions from Automatically Fired Small Scale Heating System under Laboratory Conditions. Int. Journal of Renewable Energi Development, 7(2), 111-121.https://doi.org/10.14710/ijred.7.2.111-121

Particle mass and gaseous emissions from small scale modern wood stoves

“…The nucleated particles grow further by coagulation, agglomeration, condensation and surface reaction. The fine particles are mainly formed of potassium salts such as K2SO4 (potassium sulphate), KCl (potassium chloride), K2CO3 (potassium carbonate) and smaller amounts of zinc, sodium and organic material [2,5,8]. The obtained results demonstrate quite some variation in the measured PM1 and PM2.5 values over time for the different batches, which is typical for the combustion of wood log stoves.…”

“…The nucleated particles grow further by coagulation, agglomeration, condensation and surface reaction. The fine particles are mainly formed of potassium salts such as K2SO4 (potassium sulphate), KCl (potassium chloride), K2CO3 (potassium carbonate) and smaller amounts of zinc, sodium and organic material [2,5,8]. [8,10], which may be due to the difference of the combustion technologies, the measurement protocols and the instruments used.…”

“…Emissions from biomass combustion can be classified into two groups, which are gaseous emissions and particle emissions [1][2][3][4]. The gaseous emissions are the main gas compounds (CO2, H2O and O2), carbon monoxide (CO), partially combusted hydrocarbons (CxHy or OGC), sulphur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), etc [2,5]. Besides gaseous emissions, particulate matter (PM) emissions are always observed during biomass combustion.…”

“…Besides gaseous emissions, particulate matter (PM) emissions are always observed during biomass combustion. Particles can be divided into two groups according to their size [2,6,7]. These are fine particles and coarse particles.…”

“…The nucleated particles grow further by coagulation, agglomeration, condensation and surface reaction. Particles larger than 1 μm in diameter are often called coarse particles, forming mainly from char or ash species with low vapour pressures which do not vaporize during combustion [2,4,7]. There is lack of information regarding the characterization of particulate and gaseous emissions from small scale biomass combustion appliances.…”