Air Pollution: Burning Fossil Fuels

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Air Pollution Burning Fossil Fuels
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What are fossil fuels?

• Fossil fuels or mineral fuels are fossil source
  fuels.
• There are three major forms of fossil fuels 
• coal
• oil 
• natural gas

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How is Coal formed?

• Coal deposits come from the forests in the warm,
  swampy river deltas of the Carboniferous period,
  some 320 million years ago.

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How is oil and gas formed?

• About 360 to 286 million years ago. The land was
  covered with swamps filled with huge trees, ferns
  and other large leafy plants. The water and seas
  were filled with algae - the green stuff that
  forms on a stagnant pool of water. Algae is
  actually millions of very small plants. 

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So what's the problem?

• 86 of primary energy production in the world
  comes from burning fossil fuels.
• Fossil fuels are non-renewable resources
• Burning fossil fuels produces around 6.3 billion
  metric tons of CO2 per year, but natural
  processes can only absorb about ½ of that amount
  so there is an increase of 3.2 billion tons of
  atmospheric CO2 per year.

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Consequences of Burning Fossil Fuels

• In the U S, more than 90 of greenhouse gases
  come from the combustion of fossil fuels.
• Burning of fossil fuels produces other air
  pollutants, which form sulfuric and nitric acids,
  which fall to Earth as acid rain.
• Buildings made from marble and limestone are in
  danger, as the acids dissolve calcium carbonate.

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Acid rain, What? Here?

• H2O (l) CO2 (g) ? H2CO3 (aq)
• 2H2O (l) H2CO3 (aq) ? CO3-2 (aq) 2H3O (aq)

• The term "acid rain" is the deposition of acidic
  components in rain, snow, fog, dew, or dry
  particles.
• "Clean" or unpolluted rain is slightly acidic,
  its pH being about 5.0, because carbon dioxide
  and water in the air react together to form
  carbonic acid, a weak acid.

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Other Sources of Acid Rain?

• SO3-2 H2O ? H2SO4

• Sulfite ions from combustion, combine with water
  in the atmosphere to form sulfuric acid
• Sources of these pollutants are vehicles and
  industrial and power-generating plants.