[Stoves] re-kindling stoves

[ajheggie at gmail.com]

On Thursday 23 December 2010 00:08:26 Crispin Pemberton-Pigott wrote:
> Dear Andrew
>
> "Generally particulates are formed in the secondary combustion area.
> From a long term health point of view particulates remain the bigger
> problem over straight thermal conversion efficiency."
>
> This is certainly an area of active interest. What I seen so far shows
> very little in the way of particles when the combustion is limited to a
> region of low excess air and high temperature. It is a very
> reproducible effect. We can go from nearly zero ug to say 2 mg/m^3 just
> by changing the amount of secondary air.

It would be interesting to see how this secondary air was contributing to 
the effect. What if the secondary air were preheated to >800C?
>
> This supports your view about the secondary combustion zone. Tami Bond
> also talks about particle growth in this zone,

Of course I attribute this view to discussions on [stoves] with Tami. I 
have no accurate means of measuring particulates. From these discussions, 
recent research on the morphing of aliphatic ( chainlike) molecules to 
phenol type ( carbon rings) compounds as pyrolysis temperature increase 
and talking with my brother about the relative incombustibility of 
graphite ( close but weakly linked sheets of carbon rings) I'm tending to 
the conclusion that the conditions that favour ring type reforming of 
carbon atoms must be avoided.

AJH