"Clean Air Strategy" today we find out.

[Woodworks]

11 minutes ago, Billhook said:

Can someone find a chart which shows the percentage of each different particulate pollution in the uk.

 

I just have this feeling that although it is a good direction to go, to try and filter diesel fumes and wood smoke, or burn the correct material at the correct temperature, there may be more pollution every time half a dozen Euro fighters take off from our local RAF airbase, with full afterburner, than all the wood stoves in this county put together

This any good?  http://www.woodheatassociation.org.uk/is-biomass-heating-causing-urban-air-pollution/

[Woodworks]

56 minutes ago, Puffingbilly413 said:

Yep - was in Lidl (or possibly Aldi - can't remember as we've got both) today and noticed their bags of kiln dried logs in the entrance way.  In plastic bags and loads of condensation on the inside.  No way they are going to be 'kiln' dry.

 

Plus they work out about £450 a tonne if you add it up...

Kiln dried is just a process for drying. It is a system that is capable of beating air dried given enough time and energy but no guarantee of quality.

 

 

Edited January 14, 2019 by Woodworks

[Billhook]

26 minutes ago, Woodworks said:

This any good?  http://www.woodheatassociation.org.uk/is-biomass-heating-causing-urban-air-pollution/

Perfect, thanks for that.

So transport 50%  wood heat 3% about what I suspected

[otter]

What about the moisture content in the wood that is burnt in the kiln to dry the wood???  How would that be 15% mc??  Would you air dry it to below 20% to dry kiln to 15? This county drowning in idiots ,  and all the industrial biomass boilers burning green wood?  

Don't make sense.  

[Squaredy]

34 minutes ago, Billhook said:

Perfect, thanks for that.

So transport 50%  wood heat 3% about what I suspected

Mmmm well the governement are using a figure of 38% and say the research shows domestic heating is the biggest pollutor of fine particulate matter (PM2.5).  https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/clean-air-strategy-2019/clean-air-strategy-2019-executive-summary#chapter-6-action-to-reduce-emissions-at-home  If you follow the link, it is in the first paragraph in Chapter 6.

 

What is the truth?  Where do all these figures come from?  Maybe this needs to be looked into by fullfact.org?  Are the government totally barking up the wrong tree (won't be the first time) or is woodburning really a major problem?

[Billhook]

5 minutes ago, Squaredy said:

Mmmm well the governement are using a figure of 38% and say the research shows domestic heating is the biggest pollutor of fine particulate matter (PM2.5).  https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/clean-air-strategy-2019/clean-air-strategy-2019-executive-summary#chapter-6-action-to-reduce-emissions-at-home  If you follow the link, it is in the first paragraph in Chapter 6.

 

What is the truth?  Where do all these figures come from?  Maybe this needs to be looked into by fullfact.org?  Are the government totally barking up the wrong tree (won't be the first time) or is woodburning really a major problem?

There are lies, damned lies and then there are statistics!

 

Conclusion

PM₁₀ and NO_x emission analysis for London shows that the majority of emissions originate from road transport and other forms of transport. In urban centres like London, only 3-4% of air quality emissions stem from “other fuels”, and it is unclear how much of the “other fuels” related emissions can be attributed to wood heating. Measurement programmes show that the emissions related to wood burning mainly originate from garden waste burning, patio wood burners, and “decorative or secondary heating source”; and government data show that most of the decorative/secondary heating sources in London are open fires.

[gdh]

19 minutes ago, otter said:

What about the moisture content in the wood that is burnt in the kiln to dry the wood???  How would that be 15% mc??  Would you air dry it to below 20% to dry kiln to 15? This county drowning in idiots ,  and all the industrial biomass boilers burning green wood?  

Don't make sense.  

Apart from the boilers that burn waste sawdust etc most need sub 20% moisture to work properly. We dry our woodchip which we use for our kiln to less than 15. You just use a small percentage of what you've dried for the next lot. 

 

Biomass boilers are also much more efficient than any log burner so emissions would be much less.

[Squaredy]

3 minutes ago, Billhook said:

There are lies, damned lies and then there are statistics!

 

Conclusion

PM₁₀ and NO_x emission analysis for London shows that the majority of emissions originate from road transport and other forms of transport. In urban centres like London, only 3-4% of air quality emissions stem from “other fuels”, and it is unclear how much of the “other fuels” related emissions can be attributed to wood heating. Measurement programmes show that the emissions related to wood burning mainly originate from garden waste burning, patio wood burners, and “decorative or secondary heating source”; and government data show that most of the decorative/secondary heating sources in London are open fires.

I very much want to believe what you are quoting, I am a bit wary though as the Wood Heat Association are not exactly independent! 

 

Perhaps the discrepancy can be explained by the fact the research quoted by the Wood Heat Association is based on data collected in 2009 to 2011.  Maybe this is before much of the current boom period in woodburner use.

[Woodworks]

1 minute ago, Squaredy said:

I very much want to believe what you are quoting, I am a bit wary though as the Wood Heat Association are not exactly independent! 

 

Perhaps the discrepancy can be explained by the fact the research quoted by the Wood Heat Association is based on data collected in 2009 to 2011.  Maybe this is before much of the current boom period in woodburner use.

2

Yes, when I posted the link I was not holding up as gospel. Can't imagine they are impartial 

[openspaceman]

50 minutes ago, gdh said:

Biomass boilers are also much more efficient than any log burner so emissions would be much less. 

This is mostly true but it tends to be a result of size and separation between combustion and heat exchange. A large , say 500kW(t) chip stoker will accept 30% mc wwb chip and it's flue temperature will be around 110C, so it extracts far more usable heat out of the wood chemical energy. Also heat losses decrease with the cube of the size of the device, so it's easier to keep the combustion hot.

 

What the politicians are going for is that dry wood is an indicator of clean burning, in fact high temperature is what is necessary, probably over 800C for a couple of seconds  to prevent PICs forming (and it's difficult to burn out PICS once they are beyond a flame) and in a small device with large heat losses this becomes difficult if you have to evaporate large amounts of moisture.

 

Now I don't want to  deny particulates from wood burning are bad for health and I want to see wood burned cleanly but here is a classic case of skewing statistics to make a case for causality.

 

Some of the protagonists are young medical researchers who can see that respiratory problems  are a cause of premature death, after cancer (time will tell if cancers other than lung and scrotum cancer are caused by inhaled particulates, it seems likely)and diseases linked with obesity and think eliminating inhalation of particulates will address this. Unfortunately studies in far worse polluted places than britain do not bear this out but there is a scramble for research budgets which makes it worthwhile to hype things up. Also they have a blairite politician hanging his hat on pollution being an issue.

 

The simple fact is that most particulates in the atmosphere are from mans' activities, those from combustion are probably, almost certainly, more damaging than other types prevalent in current air, but note the dramatic decrease in pollutants in less than fifty years. So the cohort dying now are people that were exposed to much worse pollution than most born more recently.

 

@Woodworkshas already linked to the rebuttal from the stoves alliance and their reasonable claim that stoves are a much smaller contributor than 30% with the lumped in burning of waste, bonfires and open fires making up the bulk.

 

 

Edited January 14, 2019 by openspaceman