[Stoves] ESPs for stove solidfuel PM2.5?

[Nikhil Desai]

Crispin:

Ok, the technical challenge for reducing fuel emissions has been met in
practice, at a small scale.

Now the real challenge in economics and law -- What is the optimal mix of
venting (stove-pipe or, with cookstoves in temperate climates, windows and
doors), emission reductions, and fuel quality control (or fuel processing,
fuel substitution) plus, as necessary, filter masks, to reduce total
exposures?

Mind you, I do not accept the equitoxicity assumption, so toxins and
pathogens not adequately covered by fuel PM2.5 do leave a big gap in our
understanding. (Bacteria from sneezing are probably spreading more disease
than wood smoke; Kirk Smith would know.)

Still, assuming that PM2.5 exposures - not emissions or concentrations, and
not from particular fuel or food in a particular location - are at issue, I
do hold that our (and WHO's) obsession with a fictional "household stove"
and "household fuels" has meant that we only have some generic answer for a
fictional location, not for a specific residence or neighborhood or air
basin.

With heating stoves, you have a good "playground lab" in Ulan Batar or
Kyrgyz, Tajik settlements; your household measurements have greater
applicability for a "standard" ger or a neighborhood/city for particular
meteorological conditions and non-household sources.

However, with cookstoves for household, no such quasi-equivalence is
obtained. Emission reductions from a fuel for a generic household just
cannot be modeled by the BAMG fictional one room or three room, and even
HAPiT requires adjustment for "ambient" air (and non-fuel sources within
the household).

The sooner we dismiss this obsession with a fictional residence using
fictional solid fuel cooking fictional food one cook at a time, the better.

Which means the whole "clean cookstove" enterprise needs a paradigm shift
-- having fuel and technology mix that, when used at scale, achieves
significant improvement in air quality. We don't have the data to generate
credible baselines for any particular region (other than where space and
water heating demands are significant), but the least we can do is revise
our objectives and means. It is not just one miracle stove, but a whole
panoply of tools available for intervention.

The cute thing about LPG and electricity is that once access is provided,
people make their own choices about rearranging tasks, foods, fuels, to
achieve manifestly optimal trade-off of air quality that suits them. We
don't need fancy expert studies.

In short - foods, fuels, filters, and fenestration; in addition to stoves.
What do you think? :-)

Nikhil


------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nikhil Desai
(US +1) 202 568 5831
*Skype: nikhildesai888*



On Tue, Nov 20, 2018 at 10:46 PM Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <
crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:

> Dear Nikhil
>
>
>
> There is no doubt that cooking emissions in the home are a problem for
> modern structures because of the low air turnover.
>
>
>
> Of particular importance are animal oils (fish for example) that are
> over-heated and evaporated. They will be high in BaP and other PAH’s.
>
>
>
> I was looking at the Kyrgyz Republic indoor air quality measurements from
> Fresh Air, Netherlands. It is rare to find a home that is below 25 µg/m3
> even after installing a good stove.
>
>
>
> Boots on the floor, smoking and cooking provide almost 100% of the IAP
> once the stove is taken care of.
>
>
>
> As for the use of electrostatic precipitators and catalytic converters,
> they have both been promoted recently in Ulaanbaatar at a cost equal to or
> above the cost of providing a highly advanced new stove. In other words
> they are willing to spend more money to clean up emissions instead of
> preventing them in the first place.
>
>
>
> There is a device promoted by the Japanese for ≈10 years now that is
> installed into the chimney that is electrically heated and can reduce PM
> emissions, but it doesn’t work on the new products because there is nearly
> nothing to remove.
>
>
>
> Run properly the PM output is about 0.006 g/kg burned. Run badly it is
> about 4 or 5 times that: 0.030 g/kg. It is not worth spending hundreds of $
> per installation to reduce that further.
>
>
>
> I see one of the stoves at the competition in DC reached 0.42 with wood.
> That’s pretty good.
>
>
>
> Regards
>
> Crispin
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Crispin, others:
>
> Have there been proposals to use air purifiers and smoke masks with solid
> fuel cookstoves?
>
> Emissions can be captured, filtered, vented; I wonder if commercial and
> industrial cookstoves have used not just chimneys but also filters and
> collectors for fuel and food air pollutants. (I remember Necco
> confectionary mills' sweet emissions up the street from MIT, and fishy,
> oily emissions near the Boston wharf. The Global Burden of Disease from
> food air pollutants must be quite significant, no?)
>
> After all, food emissions are likely to be as diverse and as toxic (for
> PM2.5, equitoxic by assumption) as solid fuel emissions.
>
> Something for Berkeley Earth and Berkeley Heavens to do, or do we have
> answers?
>
> Nikhil
>
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Nov 19, 2018 at 11:14 AM Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <
> crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:
>
> Dear Steven
>
>
>
> Thank you for *not* taking that in the spirit in which it was not
> intended.
>
>
>
> I frequently run into such claims about efficacious results, and not one
> in ten did.
>
>
>
> Crispin
>
>
>
>
>
> Ha ha ha, yes please! If someone can reduce gas phase pollutants with an
> ESP designed for particulates I would be VERY interested to learn more
> about it!
>
> I am VERY skeptical about this, as it sounds like total nonsense, but hey
> if there’s data let’s see it : )
>
> Cheers
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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