I’m trying to picture how big a cloud of pollution 1 tonne of CO2 really makes. I mean, one tonne of carbon all squashed together makes for a cube a little over 1 metre each side, more or less, but if you took the average CO2 spread as it might, are we talking about a cloud that would cover a football pitch, a large University campus, a state or a country?
How about if you laid one tonne of CO2 flat in a 1 atom thick puddle? What would that cover?
I guess you’d have to factor in if that tonne of CO2 is stuck somewhere where you get smog conditions or not, but
I was just reading this article on CNN, http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapc… and it got me thinking about how to convince the world that we just have to make it interesting to the greedy side of mankind to scuttle as much pollution as possible and not just shop it around. How can it possibly make sense to invent a quota for a country that can’t produce the mess, just to buy it?
you could get a rough estimate of it as an ideal gas
V =nRT/P
just convert tonnes to moles for the n term
it is close to 600 cubic meters at atmospheric pressure and room temperature - this assumes it does not diffuse and remains together as pure CO2.
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Tonne as spelled is a metric term.
CO2 is ca compound: 1 atom Carbon
2 atoms of oxygen
now consult the Periodic Table of elements, for the exact weight of each of the two elements. add the weight of the carbon atom to the weight of two oxygen atoms then after converting 2200lbs to like weight equivalents divide by the combined weight of CO2 this figure will indicate how many Co2 molecules are require to make a tonne of CO2.
So if you haven’t guessed by now a tonne is a tonne all of it measured at sea level at one atmospheric lb per square inch.