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Old soots, enemies of pure air

By Denis Delbecq • July 24th, 2008 in 12:06 · Category: Actuality

What's happening above our heads when soots produced by the combustion of the coal and of the oil get old in the atmosphere? A suèdo-American team brings the beginning of answer, in the Annals of the American Academy of sciences (1). By getting old, soots suffer chemical and geometric transformations which reinforce their capacity to absorb solar energy. What suggests that their impact on climate could be more important than envisaged.

Renyi Zhang (Texas A&M University) and its colleagues of the University of Minnesota and of the university of Lund (Sweden) worked in laboratory. They patiently subjected soots to chemical reactions which occur in the atmosphere with the sulphuric acid. An acid which forms from the rejections of sulphur linked to the combustion of hydrocarbons. In force, the particles of soot grew and changed, drawing away until ten times more broadcasting of light, and twice more absorption of light. Other consequence, soots, who absorb the sulphuric acid, become more efficient to condense the steam of water and to form acidified drops of water.

According to the researchers, the ageing of soots would have important involvements therefore in term of pollution, of health, and of climate. On one hand, visibility diminishes, and old soots play a role of stabilisation of the atmosphere, blocking the dilution of pollutants. These soots also attenuate the largeness of the variations of temperature between day and night, and augment humidity in the surface of the Earth. It remains to determine at which speed this ageing occurs in the atmosphere to include its role better on greenhouse effect. The properties of spray cans and clouds are still badly controlled, what handicaps the models of prediction of climate.

(1) Zhang and al. PNAS of July 22nd, 2008

Picture: © Denis Delbecq - on 2007

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2 comments»

  1. zorgole on Nanos dusts have a destructive effect over a gentle heat on our lungs, in which they live in an igloo in alaska or under the canopée of a jungle multimillennium, and it is possible to be even in our industrial countries who knows?
    (to whom is it necessary to complain then about our deterioration of vital air, in the pygnmés??)

  2. Fel on fôrets and volcanic programmes we badly left and, in time, badly arrived: the official report is there. We are therefore subjected to a period of lack of thought, for lack of knowledge in our choices (with the deduction particular interests aware of their acts), and in a period of reflexion which provokes intelligence, our survival being in game. It is very obvious that the exit in this domain, if he is not too much late, it is very electrical, solar energy in all its expression of use and, of course, ideal, nuclear fusion to come. To complain? to demonstrate? what's the point it is not really possible to go backwards but rather to become aware, react fast, to participate in all levels. Electricity costs to the user a lot because she is subjected to an economic policy of benefit above all, what slows down its participation in the reduction of pollution to a great extent and as long as obstacle will not have been crossed, nôtre speed of snail will never catch that of the countdown of the planetary disaster which, shone, accelerates more quickly than the clear predictions of our researchers.

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