Development Of A Unified Approach (An Index) To Study The Particulate, Carbon Monoxide Emissions And The Combustion Efficiency Using Field And Laboratory Investigations

About one-third of the world’s population uses biomass and other renewable sources of fuel for cooking and other heating purposes. The Biomass is not burnt efficiently which results in the release of pollutants which are the products of incomplete combustion. Previously, studies have been done to study the PM2.5, CO, methane and non methane compounds to study the dose exposure relationships of the cookstoves. One major drawback in these studies was that they didn’t use the surface area of the particles emitted from the cookstoves. As it has been established in the previous studies, the ultrafine particles have more surface area and therefore they interact with a large area of the human lungs. Therefore, surface area monitor was used to study the surface area of the particles emitted during combustion. Although it showed low PM2.5 concentration, high surface area was observed in some instances. Kerosene stove which appears to be a clean fuel showed low PM2.5 but high surface area which makes a potential risk factor for tuberculosis when compared to the biomass cookstoves. These dose parameters were then combined to get a unique index with the respect to each cookstove under a specific condition. This could be easily used to compare the different cookstoves and also help in designing new improved cookstove. Experimental studies were conducted in detail to study the effect of the size of fuel, moisture content, air fuel ratio and the sampling site. It showed that certain conditions in the improved stoves can produce harmful emissions and therefore it is essential to study the pattern of usage of a particular community to study their cooking pattern and design a stove according to their needs. â€