Sub-micron particle number emission from residential heating systems: A comparison between conventional and condensing boilers fueled by natural gas and liquid petroleum gas, and pellet stoves

Pollutant emissions from residential heating systems represent a main concern in terms of outdoor air quality. Differently from other pollutants, sub-micron particle emission from heating systems has not yet been exhaustively characterized by the scientific literature, with limited data available, in particular, for gas-fueled boilers. In the present paper, an experimental campaign to measure the sub-micron particle number concentrations and distributions at the stack of different automatically-fed small-scale heating systems (conventional and condensing boilers fueled by natural gas and liquid petroleum gas, and pellet stoves) was performed. Based on the measured concentrations, corresponding emission rates and emission factors were also estimated. The results of the experimental campaign revealed that the highest concentrations were measured for pellet stoves (median value >107 part. m−3), whereas conventional (about 1 × 106 part. m−3) and condensing boilers (<106 part. m−3) presented much lower concentrations. No effect of the fuel (natural gas, liquid petroleum gas) on the total concentration measured at the stack of boilers was recognized, whereas a smaller distribution mode (at 10 nm) was measured for gas-fired boilers. Because of the particle concentration values, the highest particle emission rates and factors were the pellet stove ones (median values of 2.1 × 1015 part. h−1 and 8.4 × 1013 part. kWh−1, respectively), whereas emission rates for conventional and condensing boilers were about 5 × 1013 part. h−1 and 2 × 1013 part. h−1, respectively. The estimated emission factors were also adopted to perform a simplified evaluation of the relative contributions of the investigated automatically-fed small-scale heating systems in terms of particle number on a national scale (Italy): we obtained that the pellet stove contribution is the main one as it accounts for 87% of total emissions of particle number for heating purpose.