Workshop on Biomass Combustion Generated Nanoparticles, Zürich, 14 May 2016

Expert workshop on 


Biomass Combustion Generated Nanoparticles

Tuesday 14 June
2016

This workshop took place as part of the 20th Nanoparticles
Conference

ETH, Zürich, Switzerland


BACKGROUND AND AIMS


Fireplaces and wood log stoves that burn wood in a suboptimal manner are an important source of particle emissions around the world. By phasing out polluting woodstoves and introducing better stoves, improving stove installations and educating stove users, large emission reductions can be achieved. Moreover, there is evidence that the health impacts of fine particles from well operated biomass combustion devices is much less harmful than that of suboptimally operated devices.As biomass heating consitutes an important option to contribute to renewable energy production in many countries, it is important to recognise the differences in environmental impacts and societal consequences for different types of combustion systems, and take appropriate policy measures.


This T32 organised expert workshop on biomass combustion generated particles took place on 14 June 2016 as integral part of the 20th Conference on Combustion Generated Nanaoparticles . See http://nanoparticles.ch for more information and the other presentations offered at the conference.

RESULTS


The workshop showed that there is an enormous difference in the relevance of biomass combustion particles between well designed and operated stoves and boilers on the one hand, and inappropriately designed or used devices. While in a modern and automatically operated biomass boiler with state of the art flue gas cleaning, particle formation may be primarly in the form of inorganic components, which are then also almost fully captured in an electrostatic precitpitator or baghouse filter, older biomass stoves and boilers that do not avail of proper flue gas cleaning devices and are inappropriately used, may cause significant particle emissions with also
greater toxicity.


All presentations of the workshop are available below.


An easily readible summary of the workshop, published by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy, is available
in

English
and

German
.

Thomas Nussbaumer, Switzerland
Particulate Matter (PM) from biomass combustion: An overview on particle types and measures to reduce particle emissions
Jorma Jokiniemi, Finland
Chemical and physical properties of biomass combustion aerosols
Hans Hartmann, Germany
User and fuel impact on emissions of wood stoves
Christoph Schmidl, Austria
Real-life emission of automatically stoked biomass boilers
Morten Seljeskog, Norway
Variables affecting particulate emissions from residential wood combustion – simultaneous sampling on hot and ambient filter


POLICY STATEMENT ON THE NEED FOR REDUCTION OF PARTICLE EMISSIONS


Based on the results of the workshop,
Task 32 released the following statement.


Biomass is used as a renewable energy carrier to substitute fossil fuels for heat and power production.
Modern biomass boilers that comply with today’s emission limits and that are operated
appropriately have typically a low environmental impact. Biomass can therefore be used in an
environmentally friendly way, if the necessary requirements are met. There are, however, undesired
situations which can lead to non-ideal conditions.
This can potentially cause a high negative impact to the air quality
with an increased contribution to volatile organic compounds (VOC) and
inhalable particulate matter in the size range smaller than 10
micrometres (PM10) in the ambient air.

From the
activities of various research groups represented in the International
Energy Agency (IEA) Bioenergy Task 32 and at the ETH Conference on
Combustion Generated Nanoparticles in June 2016 [1–5] it is concluded,
that the following topics need to be supported to avoid a high impact of
biomass combustion to ambient air quality:

 

  1. The operation of the combustion devices has a strong influence on the
    air pollutant emissions. This is true for all devices, however most
    relevant for manually operated boilers and stoves. One important
    issue is the use of an appropriate fuel with respect to fuel
    moisture, size, and ash content for the dedicated combustion device.
    Furthermore, an appropriate ignition is required. Investigations
    show that an “ignition from the top” is favourable for many
    conventional wood stoves. In addition, the amount of wood for one
    batch needs to be adjusted to the size of the combustion chamber.
    Finally, sufficient combustion air, although not exceeding a
    reasonable amount, needs to be supplied during the combustion phase.
  2. Standardisation of biomass fuels, combustion devices, type-tests,
    and measurement technologies can assist a target-oriented
    development to further improve the quality of biomass combustion
    applications and ensure a low impact on air quality. For the
    definition of new standards, test conditions which represent a
    real-life operation should be considered.
  3. Design
    guidelines and quality management for the planning and
    implementation of biomass combustion plants can assist an
    appropriate layout and dimensioning as a pre-condition for an ideal
    operation of the combustion and the flue gas cleaning. Furthermore,
    plant monitoring can assist an on-going optimisation of the
    operation mode and an adaptation on varying requirements and fuel
    parameters.
  4. An
    international exchange of experience between all stakeholders from
    research, industry, energy economics, and national authorities can
    assist this process. Nevertheless, the enforcement of regulations on
    energy standards and on air quality plays an important role and
    needs to be followed also on a national basis.

 

 

 

 

The above statement can be downloaded as a separate PDF document
here