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Wood heaters too dirty to sell are clean enough to be donated to Native American tribes and Appalachian communities for a tax deduction, says EPA
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- Authors
- Emily Holden
- Published
- Jun 18 2020
- Word count
- 875 words
I'm torn on this (the wood burning for energy, not the giving the unusable units to the natives ala smallpox blankets). Fundementally, no matter how you market it, combustion will always produce
the same byproducts, emit the same pollutantssolid waste and greenhouse gasses. Clean wood burning is a myth the same way clean coal is. Yes, it will keep the particles from entering the air, but they will ultimately end up somewhere.The reason I'm torn is that while clean electrical generation (solar/wind/hydro/nuclear) is 100% the best way to go, I think wood burning could be a nice complement, especially as you get further from the equator and solar is harder to generate when you need heating the most. It's more efficient than electric heat, and (if sustainably produced) carbon neutral.
I'm also concerned about the sustainability of producing solar panels indefinitely, but perhaps someone more educated could enlighten me.
Also, would appreciate someone backing up my napkin math: For every 10 LED (diodes, not bulbs) that are on 24/7 in every household, that equates to about 1 coal burning plant of baseline power required. I thought of this during a fit of insomnia walking around my house pissed about how bright it was because so many things have pointless 'plugged in' lights. I counted almost 15 in my living room alone.
Edit: Clarified my wording to match my intended thoughts.
Wood burning for home use is supposed to be very bad for your health. Clean wood burning, if it exists, would be better for your health because people wouldn't be breathing in the particles. We'd rather have the byproducts contained rather than released into the air.
Not all combustion processes emit the same byproducts. I'm by no means an expert but there's a reason why diesel engines for example are considered more dirty - their combustion happens at higher temperatures which tend to create more nitrogen oxide "NOX" emissions. Wood by its nature is not a "clean" fuel in that wood has not been refined to be more chemically pure than typical oil & gas products. Therefore wood emits a lot more "bad chemicals" than a cleaner fuel. This is a concern when you're burning this wood right in your home.
With respect to most pitches of 'clean combustion,' they're only talking about particulates.
My focus was on emissions more broadly, where it doesn't matter if it's 100% particulate free..but that we're releasing any gas at all reliant on combustion.
I'll update my post to reflect that.
I believe the ideal use of wood in a green economy is as construction material, where the wood can sequester the carbon for many decades.
I think that's stated too strongly? Catalytic converters do change what's emitted by burning the smoke. It's still not going to be as clean as burning gas, though.
It was a broad simplification yes. But it all boils down to solid material -> combustion -> energy + emissions. I'm using clean in the sense of 'No emissions,' not in the 'no particulates' manner.
You can add steps (loops like catalytic converters to burn more of the first combustion output), but no matter what you're going to hit a point where you still emit gasses and dump ash into the ground. It's just the degree to exactly how bad those gasses are, with the best-case of CO and CO2.
Okay, fair enough. This is probably more detail than anyone needs, but I figure I might as well post my reasoning:
If I remember my chemistry correctly, theoretically the best case is CO2 and H2O, because carbon monoxide will burn, producing carbon dioxide. This is generally true of hydrocarbons - if burned completely, all the hydrogen atoms should end up in water and all the carbon atoms end up in CO2. It's not easy to make things burn that clean, though, and wood contains things other than hydrocarbons.
It seems like it's inevitable that burning wood, however clean the process, produces lots of CO2 but it's not inevitable that it creates other pollutants and simple back-of-the-envelope theory isn't going to tell us how clean it can get. Also, wood is a renewable resource and combined with growing the trees, it can be considered a carbon cycle rather than a carbon source.
Of course in practice, stoves will be a lot dirtier. I wouldn't want one, though I grew up in a house with an older stove (of the kind they're giving away now). My father installed a catalytic converter as an add-on but it was a failed experiment, since it only worked when the stove was very hot. Usually, by the time the smoke got to the converter it had cooled too much. A stove having a built-in catalytic converter should work a lot better, but how much better I couldn't say.
Wood ash is messy but it makes good fertilizer.
There's a big practical difference between airborne and solid emissions though. You should greatly prefer solid carbon emissions for much the same reason you should greatly prefer that depleted uranium be in solid form. The place you live likely rests above far more carbon than you will produce as a byproduct in your short life time. Were you to apply that globally, humanity is sitting on enough carbon to kill 99% of the population in minutes were it gaseous CO2.
Solid carbon waste is unfortunate, like all waste, but it's orders of magnitude better than the gaseous alternative.