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Hi
Doug, Thanks
for the inquiry. If you could reference which article you’re looking at,
that would help in making sure we’re on the same page. Unfortunately, my
guess is that I probably have more of the same questions as you rather than
answers. The residential wood combustion activity and emission factors have
been a shift field for the past several years and the issue of Outdoor Wood
Boilers has not made it any easier to keep pace. Our records from the Great
Lakes region are similar to what you describe: residential wood combustion
appears based on available information to be a very important source of many
HAPs, but it’s not clear how good the current date is, both in terms of
activity and emission factors. I’ve
copied here the Steering Committee of our regional toxic air emissions project,
who may be able to offer some help. They are all staff at state agencies in the
Great Lakes region and are generally knowledgeable on such things, although
I’m aware that this is an area that they also have many questions on, but
hopefully a few answers also. Again, if you could be more specific about
the report you are looking at and add more specificity regarding the questions,
it might help turn up the best possible responses. Regarding
emission factors, our group generally tries to keep pace with the latest that
are published by the NEI or the EPA’s FIRE program. Some exceptions are
cases where states have developed or are aware of factors they believe to
either be more accurate or more relevant to their state. I think in particular
Minnesota PCA has done some additional work on wood burning in the past and
hopefully our representatives there will respond to this with a brief overview
of that. Another
outstanding resource on this topic is the report NESCAUM did about 2 years ago.
Let me know if you have that already. If not, I can send you information on
that. Best
regards, Jon ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Jon
Dettling Great
Lakes Commission 734-274-5183 dettling@glc.org From: Saball, Doug
[mailto:Doug.Saball@maine.gov] Hello
Jon Dettling, I
just read your article on residential fuel emissions. I am working on a
similar project for Maine. However, I am also looking into residential
wood combustion. Did you attempt to look at wood in your area? I
have realized that few emission factors are available for the various wood
combustion units, especially Outdoor Wood Boilers. My
task is to present some public information comparing the HAP emissions, similar
to your work. Additionally, I am to develop several publications;
handouts, fact sheets, and Internet web pages. Here
in Maine we have discovered that the DOE quantities of residential wood
combustion are far from the actual. Unfortunately with the EPA emission factors
available residential wood combustion is near the top for HAPs emissions. I
noticed that you used some NEI emission factors, but you did not cite which
document. I have fond that some factors have changed over the several
guidance documentations. From
what I have heard in the future EPA plans on having States submit activity data
and then EPA will calculate the emission to eliminate the use of outdated
emission factors. Although this is planned for the future we will see
what will happen. I know it is not for the 2008 NEI. Douglas
Saball Environmental
Specialist II Maine
Department of Environmental Protection Air
Bureau, Program and Planning 17
State House Station Augusta,
ME 04333 W
(207) 287-8123 Email:
doug.saball@maine.gov |