Pauline, 8 years old: “Why do fuels pollute? »

• All gasoline (or kerosene) engines emit carbon dioxide which pollutes the atmosphere, according to our partner The Conversation.

• This air pollution disrupts the climate with more heat, more droughts and floods, and causes more disease.

• This analysis was conducted by Raymond Woessner, honorary professor of geography at Sorbonne University.

Gasoline is obtained by separating the components of petroleum in specialized factories called refineries.

Gasoline mixed with air is a flammable and explosive product which makes it possible to operate a car or plane engine.

The explosion is controlled and it allows to put parts of the engine in motion to make the wheels of the cars move.

For planes, we use a special gasoline called kerosene which does not freeze even when it is very cold at high altitude.

Even if gasoline is dangerous, we rarely break down and everything generally works very well.

But there is a problem: air pollution.

When you burn gasoline or kerosene, the engine releases carbon dioxide (the CO₂ you often hear about) and products that didn't burn well.

And there, it gets complicated, because air pollution disrupts the climate with more heat, more droughts and floods, and causes more diseases...

We know what goes into an engine: air and gasoline.

We know what happens there: the combustion makes it possible to advance the car or the plane by activating the engine.

But what comes out of the exhaust pipe or the reactor?

First problem: carbon dioxide (CO₂)

The oxygen in the air (O) enables combustion.

It then turns into carbon dioxide which combines 1 carbon atom and 2 oxygen atoms (CO₂).

However, CO₂ is a greenhouse gas.

It retains heat in the atmosphere.

The more there are, the hotter it will be on Earth.

And precisely, its quantity increases at full speed.

We have never found so many in the atmosphere!

​Second problem: particles that did not burn

Afterwards, there are also emissions of other molecules that it is better to avoid breathing.

The finest of them are less than 10 microns;

we then speak of ultra-fine particles (UFP).

1 micron is a thousand times smaller than a millimeter!

UFPs can lodge at the bottom of the lungs without coming out.

In addition, the molecules can associate with each other, for example with pollen or dust contained in the air we breathe.

All this can cause many diseases… It is in our interest to live far from airports and high traffic roads.

​How to eliminate gasoline pollution?

The best solution would be to eliminate gasoline… “I imagine workers plugging hundreds of thousands of abandoned oil and gas wells that need to be cleaned up,” said Joe Biden, the President of the United States from America.

Yes, but when will we do it?

Most car manufacturers announce that they will go all-electric between 2030 and 2050. Airbus announces its first hydrogen-electric plane in 2035.

We can also tinker by saying that if we have more forests, then the trees will capture CO₂ to keep the carbon to grow and release oxygen.

Magical !

But alas, all over the world forests are being removed.

Today, even the Amazon emits more CO₂ than it absorbs because we replace the forest with fields after burning it.

There is another idea with biofuels: we grow plants that are transformed into fuel.

When we burn it, we still release pollution, but the following plants catch the carbon in the air.

And so there is a fuel/pollution/pollution capture/fuel cycle and so on.

We then limit the damage.

But problem: where to find enough fields when we need them for humans and farm animals?

Our "POLLUTION" file

Inevitably, one day there will be no more oil or gas because these are natural reserves that will eventually be exhausted.

We have had wars for oil and gas, and we continue to do so.

So, you might as well start right away with other solutions, even if it's complicated and it's going to be expensive!

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This analysis was written by Raymond Woessner, honorary professor of geography at Sorbonne University.

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