Chemical characterisation of fine particle emissions from wood stove combustion of common woods growing in mid-European Alpine regions

Organic compounds in PM2.5 emitted from fireplace and woodstove combustion of typical Portuguese wood species

“…In general, these compounds were emitted in larger amounts by the woodstove with hot start and by the fireplace with cold start (Table 6). As expected, levoglucosan, a specific marker for wood combustion in ambient PM samples (Fine et al, 2004a;Schmidl et al, 2008a), was the most abundant organic compound (Table 6). The global amounts of anhydrosugars were generically higher in the smoke resulting from experiments with hot start than those obtained at lower combustion temperatures.…”

“…High OC production in wood combustion emissions has been attributed to condensation of large hydrocarbons, enhanced isoprenoid emissions, acidcatalysed reactions and very rapid oxidation of low-volatility organic vapours (Grieshop et al, 2009;and references therein). Values ranging from 2.6 to 5.7 were reported for residential wood burning of Austrian biofuels (Schmidl et al, 2008a). McDonald et al (2000) obtained an OC/EC ratio of 3.9 for softwood and 7.9 for hardwood in a woodstove.…”

“…Residential wood log combustion is considered to be a major emission source of local and regional air pollution, especially for particulate matter and hydrocarbons, such as polycyclic aromatics (Fine et al, 2004b;Rogge et al, 1998;Schmidl et al, 2008a). The flue gases from residential biomass combustion are dominated by submicron particles (<1 mm) by number and often also by mass, and there is an increasing interest in their characteristics and implications to human health (Lighty et al, 2000).…”

“…Caseiro et al, 2009;Kupiainen and Limonet, 2007;Yin et al, 2010) have been using default values obtained for United States (e.g. Fine et al, 2004a,b), mid-European Alpine region (Schmidl et al, 2008a), or Scandinavian (Hedberg et al, 2002;Johansson et al, 2004) biofuels, uncommon in Southern Europe. Because of the lack of biomass burning profiles for Southern Europe, positive matrix factorisation or principal components analysis (unknown sources) instead of chemical mass balance (known sources) have been used to apportion different inputs to the ambient aerosol (e.g.…”

A simplified method for levoglucosan quantification in wintertime atmospheric particulate matter by high performance anion-exchange chromatography coupled with pulsed amperometric detection

“…These two stereoisomers result from the pyrolysis of hemicellulose and are also specific markers for biomass burning. It is interesting to note that the mannosan to levoglucosan ratio allows the estimation of the proportion between hard-and softwood smoke in atmospheric PM [7].…”