Chemistry Research Paper?

Question

I'm doing a reasearch paper for chemistry about the automobile industry and I am having trouble finding the answers to these questions. If anyone could help me answer them that would be great!.

Identify chemical reactions upon which the industry relies.

Determine the role that each reaction plays in the industry.

How are the products of the reaction used by the industry?

What benefits does the process bring to the industry or to the larger society?

Obtain industry statistics regarding the annual consumption or production of the reaction species.

Has the industry made any recent advances that have chemical foundations?

Are there environmental concerns that arise as a result of the chemical processes?

Detail the nature of any environmental problems associated with the chemical processes.

What solutions and precautions are in place to prevent environmental accidents?

Answer 1

I'll just give a rough outline that you can start your research from.

The obvious reaction for the automobile industry is the combustion of gasoline.  Unfortunately, gasoline is not a single compound, so writing an equation for it is difficult.  You can use octane as an approximation for gasoline:

C8H18 + 12.5O2 -----> 8CO2 + 9H2O (+ heat, of course)

This reaction provides the energy required to propel cars and other vehicles.  The chemical products are just released through the exhaust pipe.

The consumption stats for gasoline should be easy to find...

Catalytic converters are sort of old, but you might want to cover those.  More recent advances include the addition of cerium oxide particles to diesel fuel to reduce emissions and the continued development of antiknock compounds and other gasoline additives (these might be getting more into the oil industry than the automobile one though).

There are obvious environmental concerns: global warming, ocean acidification, and acid rain, smog, and CO pollution from byproducts of combustion.

Catalytic converters and research into alternative fuels are the main ways that the industry has attempted to address the environmental concerns.

If you want to do another reaction, the car industry also uses a lot of steel.  Steel is produced from iron ore through this reaction:

Fe2O3 + 3CO -----> 2Fe + 3CO2

or

2Fe2O3 + 3C -----> 4Fe + 3CO2

Other reactions remove SiO2 as slag, oxidize excess carbon in the steel...