How much carbon dioxide is produced by driving a car on
one tank of petrol?
Petrol is a mixture of several different organic carbon compounds. The most common molecules in petrol are the alkanes, consisting of straight or branched carbon chains with between 5-8 carbon atoms saturated with hydrogen molecules (pentane, hexane, heptane and octane).
This is the chemical formula for the complete combustion of octane: 2 C 8 H 18 + 25 O 2 = 18 H 2 O + 16 CO 2
As you can see from this simple equation, for every single octane molecule that is burned, 8 molecules of CO 2 are produced. The standard unit measure of compounds is the mole. 1 mole of octane weighs 114 grams and contains avogadros number of molecules, 6.023 x 10 23 . 1 mole of CO 2 gas weighs 44 grams, but takes up much more volume. Its important to remember from the ideal gas law that at standard laboratory conditions (25C and 1 atmosphere pressure) one mole of gas at occupies 24.5 litres. One litre of petrol contains ~737.22 grams of liquid (or ~6.47 moles). Therefore, when one litre of petrol is burned, 2.28kg of CO 2 are produced, equivalent to 1268 litres of of CO 2 gas!! Every single 50 litre tank full of petrol will produce over 63,400 litres of CO 2 gas (63.4 m 3 ), or a volume equivalent to an imaginary cube with sides 4 metres long. I find it interesting that people talk in terms of kilograms of CO 2 because it really underestimates the quantity of gas were dealing with. Gases weigh hardly anything! In fact, 1kg of CO 2 equals 557 litres! Why dont we learn to quote the data figures of CO 2 in litres instead? How much petrol must be burned to get 1kg of CO 2 gas? The answer is that only 324 grams of petrol will yield 1 kg of CO 2 . However, this is the chemical equation for a complete combustion reaction of octane, meaning that it assumes there is an abundance of oxygen in the atmosphere and that no other byproducts such as carbon monoxide are produced. Its a simple equation, but real life is more complicated, so below is a more advanced chemical equation taking into account the nitrogen in the atmosphere. 2 2 C 8 H 18 + 25(O 2 + 3.76N 2 )= 18 H 2 O + 16 CO 2 +94N 2
Taking this further, when an internal combustion engine is running rich, we get incomplete combustion in which carbon monoxide (CO) and molecular hydrogen (H 2 ) are byproducts of the reaction, along with other gases of nitrogen. Here is the unbalanced equation occuring at high temperature: C 8 H 18 + O 2 + N 2 = H 2 O + CO 2 + N 2 + O 2 + CO + H 2 + H + O + OH + NO+ N A advanced link to combustion theory can be read here. Things get substantially more complicated when the flame kinetics & high temperatures of an exothermic reaction are taken into account, as the products are able to break down & react with eachother. This is an online application for determining the products of reaction of popular hyrdrocarbon fuels at elevated temperatures and pressures. Other compounds such as SO 2 are also produced from the oxidisation of sulphur impurities in petrol.