AAAR 32nd Annual Conference
September 30 - October 4, 2013
Oregon Convention Center
Portland, Oregon, USA
Abstract View
Measuring In-field Emissions of Biomass Combustion
RYAN THOMPSON, Cheryl Weyant, Tami Bond, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Abstract Number: 543 Working Group: Portable and Inexpensive Sensor Technology for Air Quality Monitoring
Abstract Approximately half the people in the world rely on solid biomass fuels (wood, dung, agricultural waste, etc.) for residential cooking and heating needs. The emissions are a serious health risk to those exposed (mostly women and children), causing lung disease and many other serious health problems. These emissions also have a significant effect on the earth’s climate. Field measurements are needed to understand the magnitude and composition of these emissions for climate models and health studies.
Field measurements of rural residential emissions are lacking, and one reason is because appropriate emissions equipment does not exist. In order to conduct large-scale, on-the-ground field campaigns, there is a need for equipment which is small, light-weight, has low power consumption, has appropriate measurement range, and is durable enough to withstand physical shock, dust, and temperature swings seen in the field. Good laboratory equipment exists, but is generally designed for the lab environment, and does not meet the above design criteria. Portable, hand-held equipment is available, but one unit generally measures only one or two species. Running several units at once to perform a thorough emission characterization is cumbersome to package the equipment and later download and combine the data.
This poster describes the portable equipment we are developing to characterize real-time in-field emissions of biofuel combustion. The equipment is an integrated sensor box that measures CO, CO2, PM scattering, and PM absorption in real-time and collects PM filter samples to determine mass concentration and composition. Measurements have been performed on cookstoves, heating stoves, kilns, and other rural industrial and residential emission sources. Example data is presented. The equipment is a useful tool to improve emission inventories for climate models, to develop more-representative lab tests for small combustion appliances, and to improve existing biofuel combustion technologies through R&D.