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Gaseous and particulate emissions from PET and PS co-combustion with biomass in a domestic boiler: Role of air intake and waste proportion
Summary
Some people illegally burn plastic waste with wood pellets in home heating systems to save money, but this study found that doing so can release dramatically more toxic emissions (like carbon monoxide and harmful gases), especially when the fire isn't getting enough air—up to 97 times more than burning wood alone. The takeaway: if your home or neighborhood heating system isn't properly maintained or ventilated, burning plastic waste can seriously worsen the air you breathe, making it a real health risk, not just an environmental one.
While large-scale waste incineration offers benefits such as volume reduction and energy generation, domestic combustion, driven by heating cost savings, is illegal in the EU due to uncontrolled air pollution. Although plastics have heating values comparable to those of coal, data on their household-level emission factors remain scarce. This study investigates the co-combustion of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polystyrene (PS) at 5 wt% and 20 wt% concentrations in a 25 kW automatic pellet-fired boiler. Experiments were conducted under two conditions: optimal air intake (8-11% O 2 in dry flue gas) and low air intake (1-4% O 2 in dry flue gas). Results showed that under optimal air conditions, carbon monoxide (CO) and organic gaseous compounds (OGC) emissions from plastic incineration were comparable to or only slightly higher than those from wood pellet combustion. However, low air intake led to substantial increases, with CO levels rising 10–41 times and OGC levels 37–97 times higher than those for the same fuel combusted under optimal air intake. Increased plastic content generally led to higher CO, OGC, and total suspended particles (TSP), particularly under oxygen-limited conditions. Under low air intake, PS produced higher gaseous and TSP emissions than PET. Finally, thermochemical analysis (thermogravimetric analysis with mass spectroscopy, TG-MS) was used to characterize gas phase profiles. Overall findings underscore the significant environmental risks of domestic plastic-waste combustion, particularly when air-supply regulation is inadequate.