Go Green! : Acid Rain

 The process of making acid rain

Certain pollutants such as NO, NO₂, and SO₂ form acids when mixed with water. NO and NO₂, primarily from vehicular emissions, combine with atmospheric oxygen and water to form Nitric acid, HNO₃(aq). SO₂ primarily from coal-powered electricity generation, combines with atmospheric oxygen and water to form Sulfuric acid,  H₂SO₄(aq). Both HNO₃(aq) and H₂SO₄(aq) cause rainwater to become acidic. The problem is greatest in the Northeastern United States where pollutants from Midwestern electrical power plants combine with rainwater to produce rain with acid levels that are up to 10 times normal.

Plants are also become a victim
of acid rain

When acid rain falls or flows into lakes and streams, it makes them even more acidic. Some species of aquatic animals such as trout, bass, snails, salamanders, and clams cannot tolerate the increased acidity and die. This then disturbs the ecosystem of the lake, resulting in imbalances that may lead to the death of other aquatic species. Acid rain also weakens trees by dissolving nutrients in the soil and washing them away and by damaging their leaves. Appalachian red spruce trees have been the hardest hit, with many forests showing significant acid rain damage.

A statue affected by acid rain

Acid rain also degrades building materials. Acids dissolve CaCO₃ (limestone), a main component of marble and concrete, and also iron, the main component of steel. Consequently, many statues, buildings, and bridges in the Northeastern United States have been harmed by acid rain. For example, some historical gravestones, made of limestone, are barely legible due to acid rain damage. Although acid rain has been a problem for many years, recent legislation has offered hope for change, in 1990, Congress passed several amendments to the Clean Air Act that included provisions requiring electrical utilities to lower SO₂ emissions.Since then, SO₂ emissions have decreased and rain in the Northeastern United States has become somewhat less acidic. With time, and with continued enforcement of the acid rain program, lakes, streams, and forests damaged by acid rain should recover.

Chemistry in Your Day : Atoms and Humans

Dear Reader,
Thank you for reading our blog and contributing by comments and suggestions.
We are now commencing a new series called Chemistry in Your Day, this would be a section where we are going to discuss about how chemistry affects our daily life and how certain phenomenon in our life could be explained with chemistry. This series is taken from Chemistry: A Molecular Approach by Nivaldo J. Tro.
We would like to share a little bit of information from this book.

For this edition of CYD, we are going to discuss The Relation of Atoms and Humans

We are all composed of atoms. we get those atoms from the food we eat over the years. Yesterday's cheeseburger contributes to today's skin, muscle, and hair. The carbon atoms in our own bodies have been used by other living organisms before we got them and will be used by still others when we are done with them. In fact, it is likely that at this moment, your body contains some carbon atoms that were at one time part of your chemistry teacher.

The idea that humans are composed of atoms acting in accord with the laws of chemistry and physics has significant implications and raises many important questions. if atoms compose our brains, for example, do they determine our thoughts and emotions? Are our feelings caused by atoms acting according to the laws of chemistry and physics?

Richard Feynman - Physicist

Richard Feynman (1918-1988), a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, asserted The most important hypothesis in all of biology is that everything that animals do, atoms do. In other words, there is nothing that living things do that cannot be understood from the point of view that they are made of atoms acting according to the laws of physics.

Indeed, biology has undergone a revolution throughout the last 50 years, mostly through the investigation of the atomic and molecular basis for human life. Some have seen the atomic view of life as a devaluation of human life. We have always wanted to distinguish ourselves from everything else, and the idea that we are made of the same basic patterns as all other matter takes something away from that distinction, or does it?

Go Green! : Clean Coal Technology Today

As intellectuals’ world over are harping on the clean usage of coal or how cleaner coal can be, industrial nations are once again on the back foot, and many of them have asked their scientists to actively pursue Clean Coal technologies, and come up with a viable solution to cut down on CO2 emissions. Any way, one thing is quite evident, and it is there on the wall to be seen for all; with global temperature constantly on the rise in the last few decades, and significant climatic changes sweeping down on all parts of the world, time is fast running out for humanity to find a way to check CO2 emissions.

Coal today, or for many decades in fact, has been the major source for power generation in most countries across the globe, thanks to its cheap availability on earth. But the byproducts of coal combustion are what actually are causing all the troubles. In order to contain the environmental impact, scientists have come up with method such as gasification, chemically washing impurities/minerals from raw coal, chemical treatments to remove sulfur dioxide from flue gas, and certain methods to capture and store carbon compounds from the flue gas so that it is no more released into the open atmosphere. All these technologies/methods are described by the umbrella term ‘clean coal technologies’.

If our scientific community has been so successful in devising clean coal technologies, then why CO2 emissions from burning of coal still remain a thorny issue? Well, that is mainly due to the prohibitive cost of implementing methods for the capture/storing of CO2. Lack of will from the industrial nation’s part is also partly responsible for the non-solving of this issue, even though government funded research on the finding reliable technologies are now pursued actively in countries like US, Russia, and the EU. For example, US’ FutureGen, a public-private partnership project, and Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) are a couple of clean coal initiatives under development today.

Given the current pace of research, it may take some more years realistically before somebody actually comes up with a reliable and economic clean coal technology that has pan world relevance. Until that happens, the onus is on individual nations, and its people, to play their part in checking CO2 emissions, and follow a green lifestyle as much as possible. It is time we take things into our own hands to protect our environment.

Go Green! : Biodiesel

In this age when mankind is consuming excessive quantities of fossil fuels and thus depleting the already restricted reserves of oil, the high costs of fuels has made it necessary to look for alternative solutions with which to power mankind forward. Thus, there is a gradual shift towards more reliable as well as alternative solutions to fossil fuel such as biodiesel. According to experts and also those that are enthused by this energy source, biodiesel may well in fact turn out to be fuel that will power us forward in the times to come.

In fact, biodiesel also contains some of the same characteristics as are found in traditional diesels. However, biodiesel is essentially obtained from vegetable oils that are of superior quality and can be produced through large scale manufacturing processes – like in a refinery or on a smaller scale such as in a home where a kit can do the job admirably well. Today, biodiesel is essentially considered an alternative to most diesel fuels.

Depending on the geographical location, biodiesel is produced through use of different plants and in theory it is possible to create biodiesel with the help of just about any vegetable. However, in America, it is generally produced from corn which is commonly grown in that country.

In Europe, however rapseed is the plant used for producing biodiesel while in Southeast Asia it is obtained from Soybeans. However, once these plants have been put through the manufacturing process, the end result is the same regardless of the type of plant used.

The name of the manufacturing process that takes, as the main ingredient, vegetable oil that is in its purest form is known as ester interchange and it involves combining the vegetable oil with small quantities of Methanol which are then together put in alkaline catalyst to change the vegetable oil’s makeup.

Once the process is completed, you will get a fuel that burns cleanly and which has the same viscosity as that of the regular diesel fuel. Today, biodiesel is only used to replace those diesel fuels that are petroleum based. In any case, there is no doubting that this alternative energy source is economical and also very efficient and thus will, once its manufacturing processes are thoroughly understood and mastered, prove to be the answer to our energy needs while also ensuring minimum pollution to the environment.

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Pictures:

• http://www.stickerguy.com/stikweek/biodiesel-big.gif
  

• https://reich-chemistry.wikispaces.com/file/view/biodiesel-flow-chart.gif/76288631/biodiesel-flow-chart.gif
• http://dieselnews.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/biodiesel-soybeans.jpg

Source: http://www.physicspost.com/science-article-233.html

The Rate of Reaction and Its Role

The Rate of Reaction and Its Role

Science is always in every part of our life, whether we realize it or not. Anything that we do is always involved some parts of science in it. In chemistry, we have learned about rate of reaction and its role in our everyday life. Rate of reaction is important and has a crucial effect in our life.

Rate of reaction is, as defined by chemists,

the rate of reaction as the amount of a particular reactant consumed in mol/L per second”[1].

Obviously, there are some factors that affect the rate of reaction, which are:

1. Temperature
2. Concentration
3. Catalyst
4. Surface Area
5. Nature of Substance

Temperature and Concentration

Increasing temperature helps egg to evenly cooked

In order to control the rate of reaction, we can manipulate those variables into the state that we need. For example, if we want to cook an egg faster, we can increase the temperature, as more heat involved, the faster the egg will cooked. Also, 2 tablets of antacid will neutralize the same amount of acid faster that just one tablet, because we increase the amount of reactant (concentration).

Catalyst

Catalyst, what is it? Catalyst is a chemical substance which provides an additional reaction mechanism for a reaction. So, beside we increase or decrease the reactant, we could add an ‘extra’ substance to enhance or delay the rate of

reaction. For example, in human body, we produce a special enzyme, which helps to starch hydrolyze glucose on digesting process.

Surface Area

Do you know that aiming a big tank with cannon is easier than a soldier’s head? In the rate of reaction is the same, if we have a bigger surface area for reactants the particles inside it are more likely to collide more intense with other reactant, and therefore forming a new substance (particle theory). For example, 5 kg of ice cube in hot water with surface area of 100m² will melt faster than the one that has 50m² surface area.

Why do we need to control it?

So, why do we control the rate of reaction? The answer is simple, because we want it that way for our necessity, in wildlife a wood could decompose in over 300 years if it exposed to open air, but we want the process faster to get heat out of it, so we light the wood, we adding extra energy to fasten the process.

The rusting process of an iron is pretty much fast, not to mention if it’s in rough climate, but we don’t want the process occur, or at least we want to delay the process, so we paint it, or cover it with a substance that slows down the process.

Finally, the ability of rate of reaction is important and has a big role in our everyday life, so we have to control it, in order to satisfy our necessity.

Bibliography

Frostburg, A. (n.d.). Everyday Kinetics. Retrieved November 2009, from Antoine Frostburg: http://antoine.frostburg.edu/chem/senese/101/kinetics/faq/everyday-kinetics.shtml

Think Quest. (n.d.). The rate of reaction. Retrieved November 2009, from Think Quest Library: http://library.thinkquest.org/c004970/reaction/rates.htm

Wikipedia Encyclopedia. (2009, November 20). Reaction Rate. Retrieved November 2009, from Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rate_of_reaction

Yahoo Answer. (2009, October 6). Catalyst Effect In Rate of Reaction. Retrieved November 2009, from Yahoo Answer: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091006203564AAdoRb4

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[1] http://library.thinkquest.org/c004970/reaction/rates.htm