{"id":4569,"date":"2020-06-29T06:02:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-29T06:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mocktheorytest.com\/resources\/?p=4569"},"modified":"2020-06-29T20:08:44","modified_gmt":"2020-06-29T20:08:44","slug":"why-does-burning-fuel-create-more-weight-in-carbon-dioxide-co2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mocktheorytest.com\/resources\/why-does-burning-fuel-create-more-weight-in-carbon-dioxide-co2\/","title":{"rendered":"Why does burning fuel create more weight in carbon dioxide (CO2)?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>When you burn a litre of diesel, which weighs around 840g, you get around <strong>2.68kg of carbon dioxide (CO2)<\/strong>. When you burn a litre of petrol, which weighs around 740g, you get around <strong>2.31kg of carbon dioxide<\/strong>. Why is what comes out of the exhaust much heavier than the fuel itself?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The reason is that the process of burning the fuel grabs oxygen from the air used in combustion and combines it with carbon molecules to <a href=\"https:\/\/mocktheorytest.com\/resources\/how-much-damage-does-driving-cause-to-the-environment\/\">create CO2 which is a greenhouse gas<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Carbon molecules are quite light. If we talk in molar mass, the standard weight of carbon is 12.011g\/mol. But in creating CO2, it grabs a couple of oxygen atoms and these weigh just under 16g\/mol <em>each<\/em>. So, you&#8217;ve got your carbon (C = 12) and two oxygen (O2 = 32). Add those together and you get 44g\/mol. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What does this mean? Well, every time you take 12g\/mol out of the diesel, you create a product which is 44g\/mol. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But diesel isn&#8217;t all carbon. Out of the 840g that one litre of diesel weighs, 720g is carbon (about 86.2%). <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Almost all the carbon combines with oxygen and you can figure it out using this equation (with the figures conveniently rounded):<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-background has-luminous-vivid-amber-background-color\">The weight of carbon in a litre of diesel (720) divided by the relative weight of carbon (12) multiplied by the relative weight of carbon dioxide (44).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>724g \/ 12 * 44 = 2.65kg. That is close enough to the 2.68kg that is quoted as the amount of CO2 created when a litre of diesel is burned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>How much C02 is created when petrol is burned?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Petrol contains 87% carbon, or around 640 grams per litre. Using the same equation above, we have:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>640 \/ 12 * 44 = 2.35kg of C02, which is close to the given average of 2.31kg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The weight of petrol is not consistent and it depends on things like the standard temperature and pressure and the octane rating. It&#8217;s usually given as a figure between 0.7 and 0.78kg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When you burn a litre of diesel, which weighs around 840g, you get around 2.68kg of carbon dioxide (CO2). When you burn a litre of petrol, which weighs around 740g, you get around 2.31kg of carbon dioxide. Why is what<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mocktheorytest.com\/resources\/why-does-burning-fuel-create-more-weight-in-carbon-dioxide-co2\/\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3734,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[183],"class_list":["post-4569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-advice","tag-fuel-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mocktheorytest.com\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mocktheorytest.com\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mocktheorytest.com\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mocktheorytest.com\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mocktheorytest.com\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4569"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mocktheorytest.com\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4569\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4577,"href":"https:\/\/mocktheorytest.com\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4569\/revisions\/4577"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mocktheorytest.com\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mocktheorytest.com\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mocktheorytest.com\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mocktheorytest.com\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}