Can someone please point me in the right direction. I'm looking for FACTUAL/REAL data of a comparison between car emissions and wood emissions. I'm sure there is reputable data available .... I've tried searching and cannot find anything concrete however am sure that one of you guys can help me out. Thanks in advance and happy burning!
Help please .... emissions question
- Thread starter Jotulf3cb
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That is really comparing apples and oranges.
Most stoves will list grams/hour particulates, but create very little NOx as they just don't burn hot enough, minimal SOx as there is not a lot of sulfur in wood, and CO2 is somewhat of a non-issue as it it all CO2 which was pulled from the atmosphere very recently and would be going back to the atmosphere as the tree decays anyway.
Cars create amounts of CO2 from fossil fuels which is all 'new' CO2 as far as the atmosphere is concerned, there can be modest NOx emissions due to high temp combustion, but minimal / no particulates as gasoline burns substantially cleaner.
I don't know if this answers your question. You might try looking around some EPA / government web sites for car emission data if you have a specific car, model year, size in mind. Stove mfr's usually list particulate emissions somewhere in the literature.
Most stoves will list grams/hour particulates, but create very little NOx as they just don't burn hot enough, minimal SOx as there is not a lot of sulfur in wood, and CO2 is somewhat of a non-issue as it it all CO2 which was pulled from the atmosphere very recently and would be going back to the atmosphere as the tree decays anyway.
Cars create amounts of CO2 from fossil fuels which is all 'new' CO2 as far as the atmosphere is concerned, there can be modest NOx emissions due to high temp combustion, but minimal / no particulates as gasoline burns substantially cleaner.
I don't know if this answers your question. You might try looking around some EPA / government web sites for car emission data if you have a specific car, model year, size in mind. Stove mfr's usually list particulate emissions somewhere in the literature.
This is just off the top of my head, but aren't car emissions rated in grams per mile, while stoves are grams per hour. I think you will have a fundamental problem finding a common denominator, unless you find a way to use your wood stove to power a thrashed out Pinto or the like. Then you could see how far it would get in an hour. A little math, and you'll have your numbers. 
Better comparison would be nonroad vehicles, those are rated in emissions per hour I believe (drill rigs, construction equipment, etc,); most any federal agency that permits a project will have some of that data in the air quality analysis section of the Environmental Impact Statement for the project (the agency's public decisionmaking document); particularly projects in California.
dougand3
Minister of Fire
WhitePine said:
Well, I really liked the Pinto cuz my daddy had a Vega!...if you powered the Vega with a wood stove - it would have accelerated MUCH better.
dougand3 said:
I had a Vega. Bought it new. Put 30K miles on it and the engine was shot. It took me a long time to put my disgust aside and buy a GM label again.
Disclaimer: I never had a Pinto and never wanted one.
woodchip
Minister of Fire
Quite a few people on here do not just heat their houses with wood, but can cook a meal on the stove too (and quite a few here have made quite tasty pizza's inside them too).
That means you get two benefits for just one set of emissions.
I'm curious as to why you want to compare car emissions with keeping warm, which has to be done somehow, either wood, gas, coal, electric etc.........
That means you get two benefits for just one set of emissions.
I'm curious as to why you want to compare car emissions with keeping warm, which has to be done somehow, either wood, gas, coal, electric etc.........
thechimneysweep
Minister of Fire
It's not clear if you're looking for a one-car to one-stove comparison, or emissions totals on a national basis. For the latter as of 2002, check out http://www.epa.gov/ttn/chief/net/2002neibooklet.pdf. Scroll down to page 26 to view graphs and stats for individual pollutants, and compare the "Residential Wood" numbers to the total of the "On-road" and "Road Dust" numbers.
Danno77
Minister of Fire
I tried to heat my house with the car and it polluted more than the stove. I tried to drive the stove to work and it polluted more than my car. I don't know what to tell you.
henkmeuzelaar
New Member
Jotulf3cb said:
There are basically two types of approaches to the study of atmospheric pollutant emission sources (including car exhaust and wood combustion sources, as well as a dozen or so other common source types) for a given air basin, namely "source modeling" and "receptor modeling".
In source modeling one tries to determine what major emission sources exist at particular locations within the study area, what the nature and quantity of the atmospheric pollutants emitted by these sources is and how they are likely to be transported and transformed in the environment in order to predict what kind of pollutants can be expected to occur at a given point of interest and roughly at what concentrations.
In other words, in source modeling one already knows the pollution sources and the pollutants emitted and now one wants to calculate their abundance, let's say at the location of a newly planned hospital or school complex. Consequently, source modeling is a form of foreward modeling. Detailed organic source profiles for a wide range of emission sources, including wood and cars, have been determined by Rogge and Mazurek et al. whereas inorganic source profiles have been published by Hopke et al. (just Google these names in combination with terms such as "emission sources" to find their publications on the web);
In receptor modeling one systematically collects and analyzes ambient air samples from one or more locations within a given air basin and then one tries to determine which types of emission sources are represented in the sample, what their relative contributions are and where the most important emission sources are likely to be located. In short, receptor modeling is a form of backward modeling. Detailed reports covering the organic and inorganic emission contributions of cars and wood have been published by Watson and Chow, whereas Hopke et al have focussed primarily on inorganic emissions.
Ideally, a researcher wanting to determine the type of air pollutant emissions playing a role in a given air basin, as well as their origin and distribution in space and time, carries out both source modeling and receptor modeling in order to let the outcomes of the two approaches validate each other. In practice, systematic source modeling is often difficult because permission from the operators of the various emission sources to take representative samples tends to be hard or impossible to obtain. Consequently, receptor modeling constitutes by far the lion-share of the studies published in recent years.
Henk
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