[Stoves] Chimney-sourced fugitive emissions

[Crispin Pemberton-Pigott]

Dear Friends

I compliment Aprovecho for their work proving that the claimed "25% fugitive emissions from a chimney stove" - a plancha which has a high risk of leakage - is not borne out in the field.

"The five plancha cooking stoves in the study were also not very clean burning (Tier 1 for PM 2.5 for high and low power) but results from 54 tests showed that fugitive emissions into the room were only 1% of the totals resulting in Tier 4 for Indoor Emissions of PM 2.5 and CO (Medina, et al., Development Engineering<http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=NCNbA&m=gE.nEeIt_pwbCjE&b=IzZOky1crykil4T6dxhGKg> Volume 2, 2017, pages 20-28)."

This is a valuable piece of work. Prof Harold Annegarn confirmed personally with Prof Kirk Smith that the 25% assumption used by the WHO (based on a model developed by Berkeley) is not rooted in any data. It was just a made up number.

An unimproved stove with a properly constructed chimney provides a very low level of PM indoors, and we should reject any argument that the smoke might curl around and re-enter the house through an open window (which is a ridiculous basis for a model). If the claim is that diluted emissions from nearby homes is a major cause of indoor air pollution, then the strategy recommended by Nikhil should be taken: there is little point in setting stove indoor emission goals without a policy for ambient air quality and a strategy for achieving it. That is exactly what is happening in Hebei Province at the moment.

An improved stove, having very low emissions in the first place - something not considered by the WHO modeling - would of course have functionally undetectable indoor emission leakage. It is good to see that a healthy living environment can be created by a technology as simple and inexpensive as a chimney or a vented hood.

If you are testing a stove cooking real food, please take measures to prevent the food emissions from contaminating the smoke sample because you want to test the stove, not the cuisine. If you want to test indoor air quality, use an IAP protocol, not a stove test.

Regards
Crispin

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