New research from Oregon State University is helping make wood-burning stoves much cleaner and safer for the environment and our health.
Scientists have developed new technologies and monitoring tools that could cut harmful air pollution from these stoves by up to 95%.
Wood-burning stoves are a major source of air pollution in the United States, especially when it comes to PM2.5—tiny particles that can be inhaled deep into the lungs and even enter the bloodstream.
PM2.5 pollution is linked to serious health problems like heart disease and lung conditions.
Although only a small portion of households use wood stoves, they’re the third-largest source of PM2.5 pollution in the country—behind wildfire smoke and agricultural dust.
According to Nordica MacCarty, a mechanical engineering professor at Oregon State, older stoves are especially problematic.
Many are just simple metal boxes with chimneys and lack modern features that improve combustion and reduce emissions.
These outdated stoves not only release dangerous particles into the air, but also harmful gases like carbon monoxide, benzene, methane, and formaldehyde.
There are about 10 million wood stoves in the U.S., and around 6.5 million of them are old, inefficient models that don’t meet today’s clean air standards.
MacCarty believes wood should remain a part of America’s energy mix—it’s local, renewable, and affordable—but it must be burned cleanly to protect public health.
One breakthrough from her team’s research is a new technique for tracking when and how much pollution a stove produces in everyday use. After monitoring real homes in rural Oregon, they found that most pollution comes at two key times: when the stove is first lit and when more wood is added.
To fix this, the team developed a prototype stove that uses sensors and automated jets of air to make the fire burn more efficiently.
These smart systems adjust the air flow to provide the right amount of oxygen at the right moment, greatly reducing pollution and even the risk of chimney fires caused by creosote buildup. So far, the prototypes have cut emissions by about 95% compared to older stoves.
The Environmental Protection Agency has been tightening rules on wood stove emissions for decades, pushing manufacturers to innovate. But there’s a gap between how stoves perform in lab tests and how they work in real homes.
MacCarty’s new monitoring system helps bridge that gap by making it easier to collect real-world data.
This project also involved undergraduate students and was done in partnership with Aprovecho Research Center, a nonprofit in Oregon that helps design clean stoves for people in developing countries. Globally, about 2.7 billion people still cook over open fires, and OSU’s research is helping improve health and safety for them, too.
Source: Oregon State University.
