Apr 27 2012
Car Emissions 101 Scribe Post
*We won’t start the Scribe List over this late in the year, so since we are out of scribes here is a guest post by JamesS in the other class:
Monday we began talking about what exactly comes out of our cars, why they can be dangerous, and what the government is doing to curb these emissions.
We talked first about the Clean Air Act of 1970. This act allowed the E.P.A. through the NAAQS or the National Ambient Air Quality Standards.
These standards were set on 6 “criteria” pollutants: NOx O3 SOx CO Lead and Particulates
The Actual Set Standards
We then focused on why there were standards set on these pollutants
Mr Williard's Highly Detailed and Highly Skilled Sketch
We divided the car emissions into two categories: regulated and non regulated.
Non Regulated
- N2 is non regulated and not harmful, because it is relatively inert and passes through the car without any reaction
- C02 is a warming gas that is created by reacting with C8H18 or Octane. It seems likely that there will be CO2 regulations in the future
- H20 is also created in a reaction but is benign.
Regulated
- CO= Very toxic
- HC or hydrocarbon is an unburned fuel which is also known as a VOC or a Volatile Organic Compound
- Particulates are what come from the exhaust to form Smoke or Smog
- NOx is more dangerous as a secondary pollutant. When NOx combine with O2 due to high energy from temperature, creating O3 or Ozone.
Finally we talked about how the government can warn us about the quality of air at the current time through the Air Quality Index
AQI Index
Sources
http://www.blogmyair.com/uploaded_images/aqi-759020.JPG
http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/sites/www.intellectualtakeout.org/files/naaqs.jpg
