Jolle wrote: ↑07 Sep 2019, 14:56
hollus wrote: ↑07 Sep 2019, 14:49
If we are going to discuss CO, let's do it right. There are two things wrong in the last posts (I am only sure of one).
1) City gas carrying 4% CO. I am willing to bet the house that this is not true, I'll research it later today. But to me that sounds orders of magnitude too high and too toxic.
2) One molecule of CO displaces one molecule of O2. Not true, one molecule of CO binds to one molecule of hemoglobin... and stays there for a long time, preventing the binding of many, many O2 molecules. From wiki:
" Carbon monoxide binds to hemoglobin at the same sites as oxygen, but approximately 210 times more tightly"
"COHb has a half-life in the blood of 4 to 6 hours"
That said, I don't thing CO is the main problem with ICEs nowadays. Not in even minimally ventilated places.
True, it's indeed the blood that gets "poisoned", not the lungs themselves, my bad. 4% sounds very high indeed, sounds more like the CO2 levels.
ICE's are indeed pretty good in not producing CO anymore, at least less. Thats the reason why you can't kill yourself anymore with a modern car with a tube from the exhaust. "in the good old days" or carburettors you could get CO poisoning.
eg City Gas (company) of Singapore supplies most of the residents with domestic gas they call Town Gas
made from naptha (oil) feedstock and natural gas - it has 2% - 6% CO
Hong Kong Tai Po produces similar TG of 1% - 3.1% CO
a billion have had c. 20 years use of TG made from coal - with 10-12% CO (more if WG added at peak demand rates)
cooker (and even water heater) venting into room
cookers without pilot light - relying on (unreliable) matches
heating a bath full of water (with windows closed in winter) - yes this iirc once gave me borderline CO poisoning
btw
millenials and other sensitives might consider inflight CO2 levels
these can/could be 10-20x normal as air refresh rates are/were cut at night (by cheapskate airlines) to save fuel
about 3% of people are hypersensitive to this if they have had only a normal amount of alcohol
btw - to self
catalysts when new give only a fraction of permitted pollutant emission
and so reduce CO by 85% and NOx by 70% (or more)
and similarly reducing the pollutants in the air taken into the engine
though early 3 way catalysts could increase Nitrous Oxide (a bad greenhouse gas)
in 2012 LA VOCs (hydrocarbons) were declared 98% less than 1960s levels though car use had trebled
True but for a very short time.
) 
