[Stoves] Reducing smoke with steam

[Crispin Pemberton-Pigott]

Dear Philip

Taxing your free time for a moment...

The downdraft coal burner in Ulaanbaatar was extraordinarily clean by any
measure, especially for a small device.  I wonder if the naturally high
moisture content had something to do with it?

Would you be willing to take a guess and perhaps ruminate on where emissions
might change as the moisture content dropped? The H2O is about 1/3 of the
coal by weight. Some lignites in the area are 40%, some 30%. I was appalled
but then, if it is leading to an extremely high combustion efficiency (as
measured by the European approach calculated from CO content) then perhaps I
shouldn't worry so much.

I am happy to have the flame temperature brought down by evaporation because
the metal will last a lot longer, but there are condensation issues.  People
heat their homes by passing the hot gases through hollow brick walls which
distribute heat throughout the house.  I suspect that in many cases the exit
temperature is below 100 C especially when starting up. No one complained
about it, but I think there is a lot of moisture in there sometimes.

Regards
Crispin

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