So i lost my license for 3 months, how much pulltion am I keeping out of the air for these 3 months?

Question

Anyone able to do the math of how much i'm keeping the air clean with only one car? Been riding my bicycle and stuff lately and was just thinking how much bad stuff I'm keeping out of the air. Thanks

Answer 1

Estimated miles you would drive in 3 months divided by the miles per gallon you car typically gets; this will give gallons of gas used.

Note: estimates of mileage from actual fuel used and odomeder reading are better than factory MPG ratings from commercials, etc.

Gasoline is a complex mixture of hydrocarbons and other additives, but we can assume it is octane just to keep the math easy.

I'll do it for 1 gallon and you can multiply by what ever your estimated use is:

weight of 1 gallon: 1 gal x 3785ml/gal x 0.68g/ml* = 2574g

Now determine the balanced equation for the combustion of octane:

2 C8H18 + 25 O2 ---> 16 CO2 + 36 H2O

Now we can determine how much polution you're creating, (sorry; not creating).

I don't count water as polution, so I'm just using the CO2 part.

2 moles of octane produces 16 moles of CO2.

A mole of octane weighs (8 x 12.01) + (18 x 1.01) = 114g

(2574g/114g) x (16 CO2/2 C8H18) x [12.01 + (2 x 16.00)] g/mole CO2 = 7950g CO2/gallon

Note: for a rough estimate, the weight of pollution you create is about 3 x the weight of the gas you use.

Answer 2

163.6 tons of co2