Interesting Facts and Figures, part deux

That's part 2 for non-French speakers!!

So I promised in the last blog that I would tell you how much stuff, specifically, Carbon Dioxide is chugged out by burning gasoline. It just involves a little Chemistry and some background knowledge.

First you take one gallon of gasoline (which has a variable chemical formula based on the additives etc) which on average has about 2,421 grams of total Carbon. The oxidation factor for the burning of gasoline is 99% (meaning 99 percent of it reacts with oxygen in the reaction) and then the resulting number is multiplied by 44/12, which are the molecular weights of Carbon Dioxide and Carbon, respectively. The result is:

8,788 grams of Carbon Dioxide or 8.8 kilograms, or about 19.4 pounds.

It's shocking, isn't it? By burning one gallon of gasoline, you create almost 20 pounds of Carbon Dioxide, which is the leading greenhouse gas pollutant. I admit, I was astounded by this. It literally sounds just as bad as it is - meaning that even my car, which has about an 11 gallon tank, creates over 200 pounds of Carbon Dioxide per fill up, from empty of course.

Now whether or not global warming is a real phenomenom or not is outside the point of this blog, but you have to realize the sheer amounts of CO2 that is being chunked out of our tailpipes, considering there are about 600 million vehicles on the planet. I don't think anyone can really argue that it's a good thing.

Which is why we have quite a few things to look forward to, which hopefully if technology and luck is on our side, are just around the corner. Next time I'll post about upcoming cars and certain technologies that may change things in the area of efficiency.