An investigation into the oldest human activity and how it affects the air we breathe
Our Premise
There’s a community working on pyrolysis – mainly for industrial uses.
There’s a community working on ignition – mainly to prevent things from catching on fire.
There’s a community working on wood smoke in the atmosphere – mainly measuring and identifying the products of pyrolysis.
We bring these fields together, exploring how the nature of combustion affects what’s released.
What we have learned:
We can predict particle emission rates every second if we know the burning conditions of pyrolyzing (but not flaming) wood. Emission rates are not highly variable or chaotic. This means we can develop design guidance to eliminate pyrolysis roducts that go directly to the atmosphere.