Abstract
Despite the Government’s intervention of an intensive electrification program in South
Africa, which has resulted in more than 87% of households being connected to the grid,
a majority of low-income households still depend on coal as a primary source of
energy, especially on the central Highveld. In informal settlements, combustion of coal
is done in inefficient self-fabricated braziers, colloquially known as imbaulas. Emissions
from domestic coal combustion result in elevated household and ambient air pollution
levels that often exceed national air quality limits. Continued dependence on coal
combustion exposes households to copious amounts of health-damaging pollutants.
Despite the health significance of coal-burning emissions from informal braziers, there
is still a dearth of emissions data from these devices. Consequently, evaluating the
emission characteristics of these devices and to determine the resultant emission
factors is needed. The effects of ignition methods and ventilation rates on particulate
and gaseous emission from coal-burning braziers are reported in literature. However, to
date there are no studies carried out to investigate the influence of the size of coal
pieces on brazier emission performance. In this paper, we report on controlled
combustion experiments carried out to investigate systematically, influences of coal
particle size on gaseous and condensed matter (smoke) emissions from informal
residential coal combustion braziers. Results presented are averages of three identical
burn-cycles of duration three hours or fuel burn-out, whichever was the soonest.