News — The 50th anniversary issue of Atmospheric Environment, published this month, includes a paper by UALR -- the University of Arkansas at Little Rock -- Professors Jeff Gaffney and Nancy Marley detailing the history combustion and its affect on the environment from cavemen fires to the haze of 21st century megacities.
The paper says byproducts of combustion has been polluting man's environment and affecting his health from the very beginning.
Since man first discovered that he could control fire and combust fuels for heat and cooking, he has had to deal with the byproducts of the combustion of organic fuels. These byproducts include the major combustion products of carbon dioxide (CO2) and water vapor (H2O), along with a variety of trace gasses and aerosol emissions that have many impacts on air quality, human health, and climate, the paper says.
"We have been aware for some time that in order to avoid or at least minimize the air quality and climate impacts of fossil fuel combustion, alternatives must be put in place," Gaffney and Marley conclude in the paper. But they warn that, "no matter how dire the predictions associated with inaction, there has been major resistance to change." The UALR scientists predict it will take time " and probably government incentives " to push society towards the next generation of energy production.
"Successful application of new technologies such as fuel cells or electric vehicles will be the development of the infrastructure and the commercialization and replacement of the current fleets," they said. "After all, the internal combustion engines have the benefit of 100 years of evolution and infrastructure development. Therefore, even with the current environmental pressures, the establishment of alternative vehicles in the market will not occur overnight and will likely require government support considering the magnitude of the investment required."
For the first two million years of his existence, man's fuel usage was limited to the combustion of wood in simple campfires. But research has found that continual exposure of early man to campfires used as heat sources in enclosed areas contributed to increased incidences of nasal cancer.
Today, man's need for energy has led to the formation of megacities " large urban and suburban centers whose populations exceed 10 million inhabitants. In 1950, New York City was the world's only megacity. By 2007, there were 14.
"If this trend continues, the world's urban populations will double every 38 years and within the next 10 to 15 years, it is predicted that there will be more than 30 megacities worldwide," the paper says.
Gaffney currently leads a national scientific project natural radioactivity in aerosols " airborne particulates in the atmosphere " to examine their sources, transport, and lifetime in the air. Marley is directing study of aerosol optical properties, including scattering and absorption, focusing special attention on carbonaceous aerosols that include black soots.
The two scientists began their projects in 2004 at the Argonne National Laboratory operated jointly by the University of Chicago and DOE's Atmospheric Science Program. The projects are examining the roles of aerosols in climate change. When Gaffney and Marley came to UALR in 2006, they submitted their work for review and requested continued funding.
In December, Gaffney and Marley chaired a session on air quality and climate change at the American Meteorological Society (AMS) national meeting in Phoenix. They also presented two papers on our DOE Aerosol work as part of the 11th Conference on Atmospheric Chemistry.
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