C1- Air Quality Flashcards
What’s phase 2 of atmosphere?
•green plants evolved and produced oxygen
A lot of the early carbon dioxide dissolved into oceans. The plants also removed carbon dioxide from the air and produce oxygen by photosynthesis.
When plants died and were buried under a layer of sediment the carbon they had removed from the air became ‘locked up’ in sedimentary rocks as insoluble carbonates and fossil fuels
What is phase 3 in atmosphere?
• complex organisms evolved
Build up of oxygen in the atmosphere killed off some early organisms that couldn’t tolerate it but allowed other more complex organisms to evolve
Some now virtually no carbon dioxide left
What’s in the atmosphere?
Nitrogen 78%
Oxygen 21%
Argon 1%
Human activity is changing the atmosphere?
Concentrations of chemicals in atmosphere are constant
Human activity are adding pollutants to this: • Carson dioxide •carbon monoxide •particulates •sulfur dioxide • nitrogen oxides
Burning fuels - power stations and vehicles
What are direct harm of pollutants?
Cause diseases and death in people who breathe in large amounts e.g.
Carbon monies reduces the amount of oxygen that the blood carries leads to fly like symptoms and eventually death
What are indirectly harmful pollutants
Damaging the environment e.g.
Sulfur dioxide can cause acid rain which pollutes rivers and lakes killing the fish which people catch to eat
Carbon dioxide leading to climate change which begins all sorts of problems like rising sea levels and disruption to farming
What are fossil fuels?
They are hydrocarbons.
Former from the remains of dead plants and animals over millions of years
Only differences between fuels is the size of hydrocarbons
Coal is different. It isn’t a hydrocarbon but contains a lot of impurities but it mostly carbon
Burning fuels = OXIDATION
The combustion of hydrocarbons forms hydrogen oxide and carbon Dioxide.
Oxidation is when OXGYEN OS ADDED to reaction and when oxygen is lost its REDUCTION
Carbon dioxide : problems
Stays in atmosphere until it is removed, in photosynthesis from plants or is dissolved into river lakes and seas
Human activity is increasing this and causing the greenhouse effect
Carbon dioxide = when there’s lot of oxygen available
Carbon monoxide : problems
Produced when not enough oxygen is available : cars
Incomplete combustion
Is poisonous and causes drowsy and headache and can kill
Particulate carbon : problems
Produced when fuels burn incompletely
Float around atmosphere and then lad on ground and buildings as soot
Makes buildings look dirty
Evolution of atmosphere:
• PHASE 1=
Earths surface was originally molten so any atmosphere boiled away into space.
Eventually cooled and forms a thin crust, but volcanos still erupting.
Gave out a lot of carbon dioxide, water vapour and nitrogen, that’s how the atmosphere could have been formed.
Atmosphere was probably mostly carbon dioxide and water vapour with hardly any oxygen
Ocean formed by water vapour condensing
Acid rain:
• sulphur dioxides get into the atmosphere and only leaves as acid rain
When it’s is emitted from power stations and vehicles it’s reacts with the moisture in the clouds, dilute sulfuric acid is formed
Eventually falls as acid rain which is bad for the environment
Acid rain cause lakes to become acidic killing plants and animals
Also kills trees and damages the buildings and statues made from stone e.g. Limestone
Nitrogen pollution ad cars
Nitrogen from the air reacts with oxygen from the air to form nitrogen oxides, nitrogen monoxide and nitrogen dioxide at high temperature
Nitrogen monoxide > nitrogen dioxide
Nitrogen at high temperatures reacts with oxygen to form nitrogen monoxide
That then reacts with oxygen in the air to form nitrogen dioxide
Reacts with moisture in the cloud to from dilute nitric acid
