{"id":840,"date":"2023-01-03T17:23:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-03T17:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/?p=840"},"modified":"2024-11-30T17:30:30","modified_gmt":"2024-11-30T17:30:30","slug":"how-much-co2-does-a-gas-stove-add-to-indoor-air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/?p=840","title":{"rendered":"How much CO2 does a gas stove add to indoor air?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"CO\u2082
CO\u2082 meter next to gas stove boiling water<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

For fun I got a carbon dioxide (CO\u2082) meter. Standard atmosphere contains 400ppm of CO\u2082. Some studies suggest that mental performance begins to degrade when CO\u2082 concentration exceeds 1000ppm. I was surprised to see that when cooking on my gas stove (in the kitchen) the CO\u2082 meter in my office<\/em> began to register levels approaching 2000ppm. I was curious to calculate how much CO\u2082 a simple gas burner adds to indoor air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TL;DR: Using a gas stove to boil a gallon of water in an airtight 30m\u00b3 room adds about 2200ppm of CO<\/strong>\u2082\u00a0to the air.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Detailed calculations<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It takes about 1,300kJ of energy to heat a gallon of water from room temperature (20\u00b0C) to just boiling (100\u00b0C). (Specific heat of water is 4.2 J\/g\/\u00b0C, a gallon of water weights 3.8kg, so we have 3.8kg \u00d7 80\u00b0C \u00d7 4.2kJ\/kg\u00b0C = 1,300kJ. Note that this does not actually boil the water because it takes another 2.3 J\/g to vaporize liquid water at 100\u00b0C.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A gas stove is around 50% efficient in transferring heat to water in a pot, so we need to burn enough gas to produce 2,600kJ. Natural gas is mostly methane (CH\u2084), and 1 mole of methane releases 900kJ when burned with oxygen, so we\u2019re looking at burning 3 moles of methane. The combustion reaction is CH\u2084 + 2 O\u2082 \u2192 CO\u2082 + 2 H\u2082O, so we get one mole of CO\u2082 per mole of methane burned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At standard temperature and pressure 1 mole of gas occupies 22 liters. If the kitchen is 30 cubic meters = 30,000L then it contains 1,363mol of gas. Adding 3mol of CO\u2082 would roughly be adding 3\/1,366 = 2200ppm CO\u2082 to the room. So it\u2019s easy to see how cooking with gas can markedly raise CO\u2082 levels throughout a house!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Notes: For comparison, an average human at rest exhales about 11 moles of CO\u2082\/day. Also, as\u00a0noted in my previous post<\/a>, a properly ventilated house exchanges air every 4 hours.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For fun I got a carbon dioxide (CO\u2082) meter. Standard atmosphere contains 400ppm of CO\u2082. Some studies suggest that mental…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":841,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[35],"class_list":["post-840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-handyman","tag-engineering","post-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/WP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/CO2monitor-scaled.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=840"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":843,"href":"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840\/revisions\/843"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}