Guidelines for automated control systems for stoves

Abstract

ERA-NET Bioenergy is a network of national research and development programmes focusing on bioenergy which includes 14 funding organisations from 10 European countries: Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, The Netherlands, Poland, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Its mission is to enhance the quality and cost-effectiveness of European bioenergy research programmes, through coordination and cooperation between EU Member States. The project Woodstoves2020 (Development of next generation and clean wood stoves) has been supported in the period between October 2009 and September 2012 by ERA-NET Bioenergy under 7th Joint Call for Research and Development of the ERA-NET Bioenergy from 2013. Today small-scale biomass combustion is one of the most relevant bioenergy applications. Driven by EU-wide and national measures to promote the utilisation of biomass for energy production, the European market for biomass based residential heating systems is expected to substantially increase by about 130% until 2020 (based on 2009). Regarding the installed units stoves show the highest and steadily increasing numbers in Europe. According to market studies performed within the EU FP7 project EU-UltraLowDust (Project No. 268189), in 2020 in Europe a potential for an annual installation of almost 2,200,000 stoves (logwood and pellet stoves) is forecasted. This additional potential for renewable energy production will of course contribute to a reduction of the EU greenhouse gas emissions. However, it is also well known that among the different residential biomass combustion technologies logwood stoves show the highest CO, OGC and fine particulate matter (PM) emissions. Against this background, the project Woodstoves2020 aims at the development of innovative measures and technologies in order to further reduce emissions from wood stoves, to increase their thermal efficiency and to expand their field of application from solely single room heating to central heating. The latter could especially be of relevance for future applications in low energy buildings. Accordingly, the detailed objectives of the project proposed can be structured as follows. Objectives related to emission reduction -Development and implementation of automated control systems for stoves as a feature of new stoves but also as retrofit units for existing models. Automated control systems can help to widely eliminate user induced operation errors and therefore have a huge potential for emission reduction. -Evaluation and test of new high-temperature catalysts specially adapted to wood stoves for efficient CO, OGC and soot emission reduction. Catalysts should be implemented in new stove concepts as a basis for an ultra-low emission operation which could be comparable to the emission level of automated small-scale boilers. -Evaluation and test of foam ceramic materials for efficient PM emission reduction. -Evaluation of the implementation of modern chimney draught regulators. Objectives related to increasing efficiency and new fields of application -Development and evaluation of efficient and novel heat storage options for stoves such as the application of PCM (phase change material) with high heat storage potential. -Investigations regarding efficient heat recovery from stoves (increase of efficiency by the implementation of heat storage units or measures to stabilise the draft or to reduce standing losses). Objectives related to the implementation and evaluation of the different measures -Test of the most promising concepts by performing test runs with prototypes. -Development of design guidelines for stove manufacturers based on the evaluation of the new technologies tested towards a clean stove technology 2020. -Development of guidelines for the implementation and retrofit of selected measures for old stoves. With the new technologies developed within the project an emission reduction between 50 and 80% and an increase of the efficiencies in a range above 90% shall be possible. If in future all newly installed wood stoves in Europe would be equipped with these new technologies, a PM emission reduction of 60 - 90% could be achieved. In order to reach these objectives, a consortium of 4 research organisations and 4 industrial partners from 4 European countries collaborated within Woodstoves2020 (see next page). This document summarises the outcomes of the investigations regarding the improvement of wood stoves by the application of automated control concepts as a primary measure for emission reduction. It should support stove manufacturers concerning the optimisation of their products and the development and design of new products with its recommendations which have been worked out based on scientific investigations as well as comprehensive test runs.