Using ethanol instead of gasoline as a car fuel can reduce emissions of ultrafine particles by a third, which benefits human health and the environment, according to a new study.
The research, carried out in Sao Paulo, Brazil, found that environmental concentrations of particles with a diameter of 7-100 nanometers (nm) increase by 30 per cent when higher prices of ethanol forces drivers of dual-fuel (or flexible-fuel) vehicles to fill up with gasoline rather than biofuel.
Currently, concentrations of ultrafine particles in outdoor air are not monitored or regulated, in Brazil or in any other country.
“Between 75 per cent and 80 per cent of the mass of the nanoparticles we measured in this study corresponds to organic compounds emitted by motor vehicles — that’s to say, carbon in different chemical forms,” said Paulo Artaxo, professor at the University of São Paulo’s Physics Institute (IF-USP) and a co-author of the study. “What these compounds are exactly and how they affect health are questions that require further research.”
Read more at SciDev.Net
Photo credit: Mario Roberto Duran Ortiz Mariordo via Wikimedia Commons
