Degradation of emissions control performance of wood stoves in Crested Butte, CO. Final report, July 1997--June 1998

The report discusses the degradation of emissions control performance of woodstoves in Crested Butte, Colorado. Four seasons of field monitoring of EPA-certified woodstoves in and around Crested Butte has demonstrated some significant failures in emissions control performance. This study examined certified stove performance degradation with two complementary approaches. In the first approach, 12 used stoves in the Crested Butte database, identified with poor, inconsistent, or otherwise interesting performance, were inspected, removed from their installations, and then subjected to emissions testing under simulated field conditions in a laboratory. These tests examined the stoves and demonstrated that only two of them were physically degraded to where emissions control technology was ineffective. In the second approach, four new stoves were purchased and the emissions performance examined under a test matrix of fuel species, fuel moisture content, and firing rate.