Emission characteristics of biomass cookstoves: A comprehensive review.

About three billion people across the globe are relying on biomass to fulfil their day-to-day domestic energy requirements by using as fuel in traditional open fires and technically inefficient stoves. Emission from biomass cookstoves leads to serious health hazards along with contributing to global warming and environmental pollution to a larger extent. Various testing methods are being used by researchers for quantifying the emission characteristics of biomass cookstoves and several technical aspects are adopted to reduce hazardous emission. The current paper provides a comprehensive review on emission behaviour of various biomass cookstoves used in different regions of world. The review emphasizes several pollutants emitted from different biomass cookstoves, various emission performance evaluation methods adopted by researchers to quantify emissions, and technical concepts and principles implemented by researcher community to reduce emission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]