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Residential wood and pellet stove emissions of speciated volatile organic compounds and ethylene oxide
Citation:
Warren, N., I. George, A. Brashear, L. Alston, D. Yang, Pertti Virtaranta, E. Thompson, P. Kariher, J. Martin, M. Hays, T. Yelverton, AND A. Holder. Residential wood and pellet stove emissions of speciated volatile organic compounds and ethylene oxide. International Congress Combustion By-products and Their Health Effects, Durham, NC, May 19 - 22, 2024.
Impact/Purpose:
This is an poster presentation submission to the 18th International Congress Combustion By-products and their Health Effects Conference in Durham, NC on May 19-22 2024. The abstract and associated poster presentation summarizes preliminary results from woodstove and pellet stove emissions testing focusing on emissions of volatile organic compounds. In addition, ethylene oxide (EtO) measurement methods were evaluated to investigate the capabilities of currently available measurement approaches to characterize EtO in wood burning emissions.
Description:
Residential wood and pellet stoves produce smoke that contains multiple pollutants such as particulate matter (PM), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and a plethora of other hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) that can contribute to poor air quality. VOCs from residential wood combustion (RWC) can lead to the formation of secondary organic aerosols by reacting with atmospheric oxidants, which can cause negative effects to human health at local and regional scales. Due to the dearth in HAPs emissions data from RWC, characterization of VOCs and HAPs from this source category has become a research topic of interest. In addition, there are important fundamental questions regarding whether the available measurement methods can accurately quantify ethylene oxide (EtO) from combustion sources, such as RWC. This study aims to improve our understanding of speciated VOC HAPs emissions from wood and pellet stoves and evaluate current methods to quantify EtO in RWC emissions. Emissions testing was conducted at Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Office of Research and Development’s wood stove testing facility in Research Triangle Park, NC. EPA Methods TO-15A with TO-11A were utilized to quantify speciated air toxic VOCs in RWC smoke and were further compared for carbonyl VOC emissions measurements. EtO measurements were collected using EPA Method TO-15A. The overall scope of this research is to explore data quality metrics for EtO methods and investigate the effects of stove technology, fuel source, and stove operation with the composition of speciated VOC emissions. The emissions data generated from this work will be utilized to populate EPA’s SPECIATE database and the National Emissions Inventory.
