AAAR 37th Annual Conference October 14 - October 18, 2019 Oregon Convention Center Portland, Oregon, USA
Abstract View
Seasonality and Inter-site Variability in Cookstove Emissions Measured in a Multi-year Cookstove Intervention Trial in Rural India
MOHAMMAD MAKSIMUL ISLAM, Roshan Wathore, Grishma Jain, Karthik Sethuraman, Hisham Zerriffi, Julian Marshall, Rob Bailis, Andrew Grieshop, North Carolina State University
Abstract Number: 578 Working Group: Biomass Combustion: Emissions, Chemistry, Air Quality, Climate, and Human Health
Abstract Particulate and gaseous pollutants emitted from biomass stoves have adverse health and climatic impacts. This study characterizes cookstove emissions measured during a multi-year intervention study in two rural areas (Kullu in Himachal Pradesh; Koppal in Karnataka) in India. In the intervention, households chose from a range of stove models (e.g. advanced biomass, liquefied petroleum gas: LPG) for cooking and/or heating. In-home emission measurements were conducted before and after introduction of the new stove, and include real-time concentrations of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide (CO), particle light scattering and absorption, and gravimetric PM2.5 and organic/elemental carbon analyses. The study had three ~3-month-long measurement periods (baseline: BL, follow-up-1: F1, follow-up-2: F2) in each location. We observed inter-period and inter-site variability in traditional stove emissions. For example, mean PM2.5 emission factor (EF) of traditional stove in Koppal was 51% and 32% higher in F2 than BL and F1 respectively. In Kullu, PM2.5 EF was significantly lower in F1 relative to BL (40%) and F2 (32%). Multilinear regression models were used to evaluate sources of emission variability including season, location, fuel properties (e.g. moisture content: MC and fuel use), relative humidity (RH) and cooking duration. Models including MC, RH, CO EF and single scattering albedo (SSA) as predictors explained 58% and 52% variability in PM2.5 and OC EF respectively. Season, fuel use, MC, OC and EC EF explained ~75% variability in SSA. LPG stoves had the lowest pollutant EFs of all the stoves in this study. Mean PM2.5 (1.8 ± 2.4 g kg-1) and CO EF (34.3 ± 23.1 g kg-1) of LPG were 3 and 2 times lower respectively than all biomass stoves. However, in-home mean PM2.5 and CO EFs were ~36 and 2 times higher respectively than values measured during lab testing. Our analysis indicates sources other than fuel (e.g. food) contributed to high emission in some LPG tests.