100 Ways to Reduce Your Impact

Step 10 Make sure your tires are inflated

Driving with deflated tires reduces your gas mileage by up to 3%. You will get to your destination faster, and you will have less of a carbon footprint. Every gallon of gasoline saved keeps 20 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

Comments

[nDR01d]

2.9Kg (weight of petroleum, rounded up) x 0.87 = 2.5Kg of carbon.
2.5Kg x 3.7 = 9.3Kg of CO2.

[EagleScout316]

Also, if you completely deflate your tires of air, and utilize Nitrogen instead, which is becoming more and more common in larger cities these days, your tires will last longer, as well as stay fuller longer, which equals more gas saved.

[ronmaggi]

Where would one find a nitrogen filling station?

[EagleScout316]

Costco has em, and Some Shell stations now have nitrogen

[cemetz]

Ha!

[fuzzmanmatt]

Maybe I just don't understand the math, but how does a gallon of gas, weighing ~6 lbs, produce ~20 lbs of carbon dioxide?

[jaggy]

(taken from http://www.fueleconomy.gov/Feg/co2.shtml )
It seems impossible that a gallon of gasoline, which weighs about 6.3 pounds, could produce 20 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) when burned. However, most of the weight of the CO2 doesn't come from the gasoline itself, but the oxygen in the air.

When gasoline burns, the carbon and hydrogen separate. The hydrogen combines with oxygen to form water (H2O), and carbon combines with oxygen to form carbon dioxide (CO2).

CO2 molecule with one carbon atom (atomic weight 12) and two oxygen atoms (atomic weight of 16 each)A carbon atom has a weight of 12, and each oxygen atom has a weight of 16, giving each single molecule of CO2 an atomic weight of 44 (12 from carbon and 32 from oxygen).

Therefore, to calculate the amount of CO2 produced from a gallon of gasoline, the weight of the carbon in the gasoline is multiplied by 44/12 or 3.7.

Since gasoline is about 87% carbon and 13% hydrogen by weight, the carbon in a gallon of gasoline weighs 5.5 pounds (6.3 lbs. x .87).

We can then multiply the weight of the carbon (5.5 pounds) by 3.7, which equals 20 pounds of CO2!