Efficiency of Emission Reduction Technologies for Residential Biomass Combustion Appliances: Electrostatic Precipitator and Catalyst

Residential biomass combustion has been pointed out as one of the largest sources of atmospheric pollutants. Rising awareness of the environmental effects of residential biomass combustion emissions boosted the development of different emission reduction devices that are currently available on the market for small-scale appliances. However, detailed studies on the efficiency of these devices in different combustion systems available in Southern European countries are lacking. In this study, two pollution control devices (catalytic converter and electrostatic precipitator) were tested in two different combustion systems (batch mode operated woodstove and automatically fed pellet stove) in order to assess the emission reduction potential of the devices. Pine firewood was used to fuel the woodstove. One commercial brand of pellets and an agricultural fuel (olive pit) were taken for the experiments in the pellet stove. While the efficiency of the electrostatic precipitator in reducing PM 10 was only recorded for woodstove emissions (29%), the effect of the catalyst in decreasing gaseous emissions was only visible when applied to the pellet stove flue gas. For wood pellet combustion, reductions of CO and TOC emissions were in the range of 60–62% and 74–77%, respectively. For olive pit combustion, a lower decrease of 59–60% and 64% in CO and TOC emissions, respectively, was recorded.