I think there was a part of the original statement that was converted incorrectly ... The statement listed 6 GALLONS of gasoline. Then later, this was changed to 6 pounds. I agree that from this formula the ratio is 6 lbs of octane to 18.4 lbs of CO2. But how much octane is contained in a gallon of gasoline? No matter what you do to a chemical compound, when you add up their molecular weights, they must remain the same. Yes each molecule can have different weights, but the sum of ALL components will be the same going in as going out of the process. I believe that a gallon of gasoline weighs about 7.5 lbs (Not sure exactly), so the original statement of 6 gallons of gas would be around 45 lbs of gas. When burned, producing about 20 lbs of CO2 sounds plausible to me. John Zeigler www.johnstelescopes.com www.mirrorkits.com -----Original Message----- From: daniel turner [mailto:outwest112@yahoo.com] Sent: Saturday, August 07, 2004 7:20 AM To: Utah Astronomy Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Is this right? (OT) I can't do subscripts in notepad but it would go like octane (C8H18) + oxygen (O2) = carbon dioxide (CO2) + water (H20) balancing this to moles as 2(C8H18) + 25(O2) = 16(CO2) + 18(H20) converting to grams as 2*(114.23) octane = 16*(44.001) carbon dioxide 228.46 grams octane = 704.016 carbon dioxide 1 gram of octane = 3.081 grams of carbon dioxide. 6 pounds of octane = 18.486 pounds of CO2. Octane is just an approximation as modern fuels are oxygenated (partially pre burned) so the real number would be a little higher. 20 pounds from 6 pounds is in the ball park. Daniel Turner --- Patrick Wiggins <paw@trilobyte.net> wrote:
I'm sitting here fighting with the one non-Mac machine I own (not sure who is winning at the moment) and listening to BBC.
They just had a Yank on talking about energy consumption and pollution and at one point stated that "burning 6 gallons of gasoline will produce 20 pounds of CO2."
Any of the science whizzes here care to say if that's right or not?
I'm having trouble imagining how burning 6 pounds of gasoline can produce 20 pounds of CO2.
Patrick
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