Results from Experiment 3
In this section, I have described what I learned about the emission levles of the three fuels.
Observations
The observations were the same as for my other two experiments. When burning ethanol, there was no residue left on the surrounding materials, but gasoline and diesel left the surrounding materials blackened.
Results
My hypothesis was proven fully correct in this experiment. I hypothesized that ethanol would have the least emission levels overall, and it did. The comparative mean emissions produced by 5mL of each fuel are shown in Figures 1, 2 and 3 below. There was a pronounced difference in emissions of CO2, CO and NH3 among the three fuel types.
Mean CO2 emission by 5mL ethanol was 570ppm where as same volume of gasoline diesel gave off 4100ppm and 8033.33 ppm CO2 respectively (Appendix 1, Table. 4). Carbon dioxide is toxic at 5000ppm; therefore diesel gave off dangerous levels of CO2 emissions in a volume as low as 5mL. In terms of CO emissions, ethanol had a mean of 19.67ppm, gasoline 343.33ppm and diesel 276ppm (Appendix 1, Table. 4). Given the toxic level of carbon monoxide, CO emissions of both gasoline and diesel were above the toxic level (25ppm). In terms of NH3 emissions, ethanol, gasoline and diesel had a mean of 3.0 ppm, 6.67 ppm, and 8.0 ppm respectively (Appendix 1, Table. 4). Ammonia is also toxic at 25ppm but the emission levels were below the toxic level for all three fuels.
Figure. 1 Comparative CO2 emissions of ethanol, gasoline and diesel.
Figure 2. Comparative CO emissions of ethanol, gasoline and diesel.
Figure 3. Comparative NH3 emissions of ethanol, gasoline and diesel.