Pellet Fuel - A Healthy Choice

Tests show that properly designed pellet burning stoves have over a 98.5% combustion efficiency. Compare this to a typical solid-wood burning stove with combustion efficiencies of only 50 - 70%. Wood stoves that have been certified by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) have an average combustion efficiency range of 70% to 75% for non-catalytic stoves and 80% for catalytic stoves. There is little value in installing a catalytic converter on a stove as efficient as a pellet stove because catalytic converters need smoke as their fuel.

Pellet stoves attain high combustion efficiencies by providing the proper air/fuel and mixture ratio in the combustion chamber at all times. A typical wood stove is "air starved" much of the time and usually "over fueled" causing incomplete combustion, and consequently smoke. Many wood stove owners and manufacturers pride themselves in how much wood they can cram into their stove and show how long they can "hold a fire". Operating a stove in this manner creates a wood "cooking" process that distills the tars out of the wood in a high temperature and oxygen-starved condition (pyrolysis) that produces high levels of emissions. Pellet fueled stoves automatically add small amount of fuel only when needed, therefore greatly improving the process.

Emissions from solid-wood burning appliances relate to the particles and chemical formed due to INCOMPLETE COMBUSTION. Wood burns with a diffusion flame, that is, oxygen must diffuse from outside the flame into the combustion zone. As oxygen is consumed while burning wood, the region inside the flame becomes oxygen-starved. Both free carbon atoms and hydrocarbon molecules are formed in the oxygen and hydrocarbons (commonly called creosote and tars) consisting of a variety of aliphatic, olefinic, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon compounds.