Particulate Emission Characterization of Exhaust from Residential Oil and Gas Fired Heating Appliances
JAKE LINDBERG, Rebecca Trojanowski, Stephen Galvin, Thomas Butcher,
Brookhaven National Labs Abstract Number: 504
Working Group: Source Apportionment
AbstractThe largest sector of energy consumption in New York State (NYS) is space heating, with the majority of such heating appliances currently using fossil fuels. The northeastern and mid-western United States in general also heat predominantly with fossil fuels such as, oil and natural gas. In 2019 NYS established the NYS Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act which mandates the state transition to 100% renewable energy over the next 30 years, which will result in significant changes to the fuels and technologies used for home heating. Further, the existing emission factor data was developed prior to low-sulfur fuel standards and renewable fuel blending mandates. In this work we seek to describe the emissions and performance of current and emerging heating equipment with current fossil fuels (natural gas and No. 2 oil) such that the emissions and heating performance could be compared to market-ready biofuels such as biodiesel and biogas, as well as emerging renewable fuels such as hydrogen. Specifically described are the particulate emission and heating performance of three residential hydronic heating appliances, two fired with natural gas, and one fired with oil. The appliance selection includes: a natural gas fired forced-air combustion burner, a natural-gas fired diffusion-flame burner, and a single firing rate pressure atomized oil burner. All three appliances are of residential scale and the fuels used are typical of those in NYS. The appliance performance was evaluated using a load-profile test method designed to include transient conditions, such as cyclic-firing, typical of residential use. The specific characteristics of the particulate matter being evaluated include: Particle Mass Concentration (PMC), Particle Number Concentration (PNC), Particle Size Distribution (PSD), and particle speciation (i.e. Black Carbon (BC) and Brown Carbon (BrC) concentrations). Each of which was measured in real-time using a dilution sampling system throughout each experiment.