Quantification of emission reduction potentials of primary air pollutants from residential solid fuel combustion by adopting cleaner fuels in China

Residential low efficient fuel burning is a major source of many air pollutants produced during incomplete combustions, and household air pollution has been identified as one of the top environmental risk factors. Here we compiled literature-reported emission factors of pollutants including carbon monoxide (CO), total suspended particles (TSPs), PM_2.5, organic carbon (OC), elemental carbon (EC) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) for different household energy sources, and quantified the potential for emission reduction by clean fuel adoption. The burning of crop straws, firewood and coal chunks in residential stoves had high emissions per unit fuel mass but lower thermal efficiencies, resulting in high levels of pollution emissions per unit of useful energy, whereas pelletized biofuels and coal briquettes had lower pollutant emissions and higher thermal efficiencies. Briquetting coal may lead to 82%–88% CO, 74%–99% TSP, 73%–76% PM_2.5, 64%–98% OC, 92%–99% EC and 80%–83% PAH reductions compared to raw chunk coal. Biomass pelletizing technology would achieve 88%–97% CO, 73%–87% TSP, 79%–88% PM_2.5, 94%–96% OC, 91%–99% EC and 63%–96% PAH reduction compared to biomass burning. The adoption of gas fuels (i.e., liquid petroleum gas, natural gas) would achieve significant pollutant reduction, nearly 96% for targeted pollutants. The reduction is related not only to fuel change, but also to the usage of high efficiency stoves.