Development of a low-smoke Mongolian coal stove using a heterogeneous testing protocol

We report on the application in domestic stove development of heterogeneous test methods that can simultaneously quantify gaseous emissions, condensed particulates and the mass of fuel burned in real time. Such measurements can rapidly identify ideal combustion conditions by post-facto dividing the test into arbitrary segments for detailed analysis. Domestic coal stoves typically operate daily across a wide range of operating conditions. The analysis technique was applied repeatedly throughout the development of a lignite burning stove suitable for use in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, the coldest and most heavily air-polluted capital city in the world. The outcome is a natural draft chimney stove with a >99% reduction in PM 2.5 emissions and >90% reduction in CO, relative to the baseline product. Including the ignition phase, the fire emits less than 0.5 mg of PM2.5 per MegaJoule. This challenges the popular notion that high-volatiles ‘low quality’ coals are inherently smoky