On the quantity of pollutant gas releases by burning different fuels

This work is a comparative study on the consumption of atmospheric oxygen, especially on the pollutant gas release (carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide) in burning the main fossil fuels, different sorts of biomass and vegetable refuses. Due to the large range of variation of the factors intervening in the practical burning of different fuels, the comparison and, implicitly, the calculations were done by considering stoichiometric burning. The quantity of consumed oxygen and released spent gases were referred to 1 kg of fuel or what is even more relevant - due to the differences in the caloric power of the fuels - to 1 GJ of produced thermal energy. It was found that the gas releases and oxygen consumption are higher in case of fossil fuels in comparison with different types of biomass, except the methane (the gaseous hydrocarbon with the lowest carbon content in the molecule). Utilization of latter, seemingly advantageous, should however be considered carefully because differences do appear in burning dry vegetable refuses, active biomass or wastes of vegetable origin