Re:The hidden cost of air quality monitoring
by aidenn0 on Tuesday June 27, 2023 @11:58PM
(#36502099)
For those not reading closely note that Hydrocarbons != Carbon. A New vehicle will burn fairly completely (if you include the cat as part of the process), leaving a miniscule amount of hydrocarbons (incompletely burned fuel) and a small amount of CO. The catalytic converter will oxidize hydrocarbons, CO and NO2 leaving almost entirely N2 CO2 and H2O (and in fuels with significant sulfer, hydrogen sulfide which has its own issues).
Re:The hidden cost of air quality monitoring
by Gordonjcp on Wednesday June 28, 2023 @03:40AM
(#36503530)
> New vehicle will burn fairly completely (if you include the cat as part of the process), leaving a miniscule amount of hydrocarbons (incompletely burned fuel) and a small amount of CO
So will old ones, if you run them on the right fuel.
My 25-year-old Range Rover has a 4.6 litre engine adapted to run on propane which is - under the right circumstances - a *negative* emission vehicle. It can have measurably less CO and HC in the exhaust than in the intake air (city air heavily contaminated with CO and HC for example from bus engines).
This is the table in the source:
and the accompanying text:> Another way to visualize the data is to compare emissions for a given amount of leaf blower operation to miles traveled by car. The Air Resources Board regularly publishes such emissions benchmarks. Thus, for the average 1999 leaf blower and car data presented in Table 9, we calculate that hydrocarbon emissions from one-half hour of leaf blower operation equal about 7,700 miles of driving, at 30 miles per hour average speed. The carbon monoxide emission benchmark is signficantly different. For carbon monoxide, one-half hour of leaf blower useage would be equivalent to about 440 miles of automobile travel at 30 miles per hour average speed.