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Indoor air pollution (IAP) from solid biomass fuel burning in traditional cookstoves is a leading problem all the world which is responsible for health and climate related impacts. The immediate solution in order to combat this threat has been introduction of improved cookstoves among rural populations who doesn’t have access clean energy. The extent of improvement in new cookstove designs, in terms of higher energy efficiency and lower emissions is in turn dependent on the customary behaviour of the users on field. The field based cookstove testing conducted in various studies show a disagreement between performance measures in the lab and real world conditions. Some of the important variables which reflect the actual user behaviour on field depending on geographical location include fuel characteristics and cooking cycle. In this thesis, the research approach focused on user-centred testing methodology for cookstoves. The variation in cookstove performance in terms of energy and emission parameters was assessed by isolating the impact of individual variables i.e. types of fuel and cooking cycles. The energy parameters which served as indicators of cookstove performance included SEC and power input, and EFs for CO and PM were used as emission parameters. PM emissions were further analysed with the help of physical and chemical characterization studies. The physical characterization focused on size distribution of the particulate using optical and electron microscopy techniques. While chemical characterization was conducted using quantification methods for organic and elemental carbon content of PM using TOR and CBMS techniques. The test variables were identified through field survey and literature review and were replicated under controlled laboratory conditions where emissions were sampled using hood method. The research resulted in six research papers addressing specific hypothesis related the problem identified through literature survey.
The results showed that the difference in cooking cycles and fuel usage pattern has a significant impact on the overall performance of cookstoves. The study provided an in depth analysis of the difference in combustion conditions during the simulated and actual cookstove cooking conditions. The cooking cycle of two different regions of India indicated a significant change in cookstove performance in terms of CO and PM emissions in addition to energy consumption. It was also observed that among the different mix fuel conditions (combinations of wood, crop residue and cow dung), wood when used as a single fuel resulted in lowest CO and PM emissions. This was again a misrepresentation of field performance (specifically for regions with wood scarcity) where use of mix fuels is a prevalent practice followed while cooking. The impact of these variables was also significant on chemical characteristics of PM in terms of elemental carbon (EC)/black carbon (BC) and organic carbon (BC). Similar deviations were also found in physical characteristics of PM where PM size taken as test parameter. Therefore, relying on simulated test protocols might not represent the actual cookstove performance that might exist on field. This calls for an immediate attention towards the development of comprehensive test guidelines for cookstoves which not only highlights the technical aspects but also the social preferences of the targeted rural populations.
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