Environmental Science & Technology, March 2012
Real-Time Assessment of Black Carbon Pollution in Indian Households Due to Traditional and Improved Biomass Cookstoves
Abhishek Kar, et al.
Use of improved (biomass) cookstoves (ICs) has been widely proposed as a BlackCarbon (BC) mitigation measure with significant climate and health benefits. ICs encompass arange of technologies, including natural draft (ND) stoves, which feature structural modificationsto enhance air flow, and forced draft (FD) stoves, which additionally employ an external fan toforce air into the combustion chamber.
We present here, under Project Surya, the first real-time insitu Black Carbon (BC) concentration measurements from five commercial ICs and a traditional(mud) cookstove for comparison. These experiments reveal four significant findings about thetested stoves.
- First, FD stoves emerge as the superior IC technology, reducing plume zone BC concentration by a factor of 4 (compared to 1.5 for ND). Indoor cooking-time BC concentrations,which varied from 50 to 1000 μg m−3for the traditional mud cookstove, were reduced to 5−100μg m−3by the top-performing FD stove.
- Second, BC reductions from IC models in the sametechnology category vary significantly: for example, some ND models occasionally emit more BCthan a traditional cookstove. Within the ND class, only microgasification stoves were effective inreducing BC.
- Third, BC concentration varies significantly for repeated cooking cycles with same stove (standard deviation up to50% of mean concentration) even in a standardized setup, highlighting inherent uncertainties in cookstove performance.
- Fourth,use of mixed fuel (reflective of local practices) increases plume zone BC concentration (compared to hardwood) by a factor of 2to 3 across ICs.
