F1 engines pollutant emissions

[J-Raid]

Hi guys, although my first post here, I've read this forum for many years.

I wanted to ask you a question that may be interesting for some of you, especially with all the "green" debates lately.

What are the emissions of a F1? I mean in numbers? I don't expect exact figures, but aproximate ranges of at least CO2, CO, NOx and Sulphur derivates and would be very welcome. If they could be in g/km would be great!

I'm into road car engines, and know quite well road car figures and how the emissions stuff goes, but of F1 I'm a bit lost, espcially as they don't have catalyzer, nor EGR's and that stuff, and as well the use of slightly different fuel and the uniqueness of such a high revving, and bore to stroke ratio.

Please enlighten me

Thanks a lot!

PS: if fuel comsupmtion figures would help, as I kno there is some relation, here are 2009's avergae of F1 I found somewhere (can't recall where though):
Australia 70.9L / 100km
Sepang 68.0L / 100km
China 72.9L / 100km
Bahrain 76.0L / 100km

[Ian P.]

Can't comment on all of the items but here is a start based on basic principals.
Bear in mind, the EPA does not consider CO2 as an exhaust emission. Byproduct of combustion yes, but not a polutant.

CO2 about 22 Lb/US gal, or 2.58 kg/L. About 1.8 kg/km (based on 70 L/100km)
CO should be pretty low considering the fuel management systems in place and the feed-back control with O2 sensors.
NOx Likely pretty high but given the high revs, possibly lower than might be expected.
Sulphur Derivatives should be easy, unless there is lube oil being burned, this should be nil. No sulphur in the fuel, none in the exhaust.

[J-Raid]

Bear in mind, the EPA does not consider CO2 as an exhaust emission. Byproduct of combustion yes, but not a polutant.

Yeah, never mind of the tittle. Just used a general one, and CO2, even if not called as pollutant as itself (hell, myself, and any living animal, I'm now throwing some good grams of CO2), but its for sure not a good thing (and please don't bring this conversation to the never ending green house talk! hehe).

Anyway, on the CO2, can I ask you how you got that figure? Because my issue is that if you did it from extrapolation of petrol road cars, that may be off the mark, given F1's don't have catalyzer, nor are optimized in their injection to reduce them.

Sulphur Derivatives should be easy, unless there is lube oil being burned, this should be nil. No sulphur in the fuel, none in the exhaust.

You're right, I made a mistake on that one. I should have ment HC's, which are more relevant.

Though, I'm not so sure about CO part. Petrols in general have lower figures than diesels in proportion, but surely still relevant, especially with F1's high outputs. I forgot how much was the CO emissions at high revs (cmpared to lower) though...

[Ian P.]

http://www.autoshop101.com/forms/h55.pdf

Check graph on last page.
While this isn't specific to ultra high performance engines, I suspect the CO and HC relationship to A/F ratio will be reasonably good. The combustion and A/F control on a modern F1 engine should be second to none.
The NOx could be completely different though.
In Gas Turbines, the NOx formation is a time-temperature dependant issue. In an F1 engine at 16,000 rpm and assuming 200 deg (crank rotation) of combustion duration, there would only be just over 2 ms of the time component. Not much. This could result in relatively low NOx numbers.
Will be interesting to see if there are any knowledgable folks who can help with this. There should be....

[J-Raid]

Thanks again, certainly helpful

Hopefully someone here will have further insight on this matter...espcially with some more ranges/figures...

[ISLAMATRON]

http://www.autoshop101.com/forms/h55.pdf

Check graph on last page.
While this isn't specific to ultra high performance engines, I suspect the CO and HC relationship to A/F ratio will be reasonably good. The combustion and A/F control on a modern F1 engine should be second to none.
The NOx could be completely different though.
In Gas Turbines, the NOx formation is a time-temperature dependant issue. In an F1 engine at 16,000 rpm and assuming 200 deg (crank rotation) of combustion duration, there would only be just over 2 ms of the time component. Not much. This could result in relatively low NOx numbers.
Will be interesting to see if there are any knowledgable folks who can help with this. There should be....

With as fast as these engines rev I doubt they ever operate in closed loop... do you have any evidence that would suggest that they do? other then the existance of an 02 sensor?

[riff_raff]

J-Raid,

F1 engines are designed to run at full load 99% of the time, so they are always near stoichiometric A/F ratios, since that is best for power. Combustion in a racing engine at Lambda near 1.0 would normally produce less NOx than the leaner combustion strategy typically used with automotive engines. But most production engines employ exhaust after-treatment devices like catalytic converters for NOx, and racing engines don't. The catalytic converter is very effective (>90%) at reducing NOx, so the racing engine would produce substantially more NOx than a typical automotive engine for this reason.

As for HC or CO emissions, the 3-way catalysts used on automotive engines are also very effective at eliminating these emissions. But even without an exhaust catalyst, the racing engine would still have higher HC and CO emissions than an automotive engine. Carbon monoxide tends to be produced at rates inversely proportional to nitrogen oxides. Rich (lower temp) combustion tends to produce more CO. Lean (higher temp) combustion tends to produce more NOx. And no NOx will be produced with combustion temps below about 2800degF.

Racing engines will produce higher HC emissions due to several factors: The combustion chamber shape of a high-compression racing engine normally utilizes lots of "squish" area. The intake charge trapped in this squish volume normally does not undergo combustion, so its fuel content is dumped out the exhaust as raw HC's. Racing engines also employ lots of intake/exhaust valve overlap, so there are conditions where raw intake charge is simply being pushed out the exhaust. And finally, racing engines are not concerned about oil consumption, so close control of oil films with the oil control rings is not required. Lube oil in the combustion space is a major contributor to HC emissions.

As for CO2, the more efficient the combustion process, the greater the proportion of CO2 in the exhaust for a given mass of fuel combusted. The rate at which a combustion engine system converts the chemical energy content of a fuel to work output is defined by its Brake Thermal Efficiency (BTE). Recip combustion engines with high BTE's tend to be very slow turning, large displacement diesel engines like those found on big ships. Lightweight, small displacement, high-revving gasoline racing engines typically have very low BTE's. So an F1 engine's specific CO2 emissions would naturally be relatively high in comparison.

In reality, the hysteria surrounding automotive exhaust pollutants is sort of silly to anyone with even a high school level knowledge of chemistry. I live in southern California, and our state auto emissions standards are the most stringent in the world. To put it in perspective, if you took a 2009 California emissions compliant car and drove it on the streets of Beijing, the exhaust coming out of the tailpipe would be cleaner than the air going into the engine! And as for CO2 being a pollutant, the largest sources of C02 on earth are vegetative decay in the tropical rain forests and volcanic activity. CO2 only comprises 0.04% of our atmosphere by volume. And automobiles contribute less than 5% of the total CO2 (from all sources natural and man-made) discharged into the earth's atmosphere annually.

Do the math..........

Regards,
Terry

[J-Raid]

Very informative post riff raff, though I already knew most of the theory, at least regarding road car engines.

Yet, I'm looking more for the quantitative aspect. It would be great if I would get some aproximative numbers, as I need it for a project (to in fact prove F1's impact not as big as what some, general public, may think).
I can try a bit, starting from road cars, and follwoing the thoery, but probably will end up too inaccurate.

On the CO2 and pollutants stuff, first I already corrected my semi-mistake, and admitted the over-exageration about CO2.
In fact last week I had the chance to talk with a famous scientific (reputed physic) which is the director of Ciudad de las Ciencias of Valencia (yeah, the famous Calatrava buildings) on this matter and the reality of human effect on climate change, and climatic models/simulations.

We both shared a similar point of view, agreing it has been taken out of proportion, and showing for example that both methane and especially water steam (and the effect of seas) is much greater than mankind-created CO2.

As well he pointed that it was inmoral that we were worrying so much about something so hypotheical, yet we don't give a --- about 1/6th of the world's popullation dying directly or indirectly (diseases) due to hunger.

All in all if anyone could help me with the emissions figures...

PS: Which are the figures of emission restrictions in California?
Here in EU, its expected that in 2015 (previously planned 2012, but delayd after manufacturers pressure) it will be no more than 160g/km for every new car sold (that includes Ferraris, which are currently at around 300!). In Spain no specific selling restriction, but there are different taxes: no registration tax for under 120g/km of CO2, 4.75% for 120-160, 9% for 160-200, and 14% for over 200g/km

A pity that other as much relevant emissions, such as "particles"(mainly diesels) or HC, aren't taken into account, despite their proven negative effectes on health, especially breathing (for allergics, asmatics, aged people and children. Causes total of around 60.000 accelerated deaths in EU a year)

[riff_raff]

J-Raid,

Think of it this way: The total exhaust emissions created by an entire F1 grid's cars, over four full days of practice, qualifying and racing, is only a small fraction of any of the following F1 race related emission sources:

A. The emissions resulting from the aircraft jet engines used to transport the teams and their equipment to/from the track location. A Boeing 747 burns 11 tons of fuel per hour.

B. The emissions created from the cars, planes, trains and buses used to transport the tens-of-thousands of fans attending the race each day. 100,000 fans each using maybe 10 lbs. (1-1/2 gallons) of fuel per race weekend, equals 1 million lbs of fuel burned.

C. The emissions created generating the electricity used to power the television sets of 50 million people watching the 2 hour long race, worldwide. My TV burns 120W/hr, so that amounts to something like 12GW-hrs of electricity used worldwide.

The actual exhaust emissions produced by the cars themselves is just a drop in the bucket. If you assume (generously) that each car will consume 1500 lbs (about 250 gal) of fuel per race event, that amounts to only 30,000 lbs of fuel used for the entire 20 car grid. That's only about 80 minutes worth of fuel for a single 747 cargo jet. Or about 1.8% of the energy required for all of those TV sets.

Is that quantitative enough for your professor?

Regards,
Terry

[WhiteBlue]

Never trust a statistic you have not manipulated yourself. What Riff-Raff tends to forget is that there is an equilibrium CO2 emission which would keep things level in terms of climatic impact.

We have passed that level of emission by burning fossile fuels decades ago and currently exceed it by more than 200%. So we are facing unavoidable climatic consequences. How much of this is used for transportation isn't really so important. In my view it is more important to make sure that the use of fuel is minimised by avoiding inefficiencies. That is applicable to urbane design as Ciro preaches as well as to automotive design.

F1 should only have a symbolic role supporting technologies that promote fuel efficiency.

[J-Raid]

Riff raff, I'm aware of some of that stuff, especially the plane one, and I agree on most of it.

But my point is not about comparing it really with others (sorry if it looked like). I'm working on an analysis of improving efficiency of cars and engines, F1 included, and a part of it is the emissions. Not for a teacher really, but I need it to be quite reliable, thats why I'm looking for figures

In my view it is more important to make sure that the use of fuel is minimised by avoiding inefficiencies. That is applicable to urbane design as Ciro preaches as well as to automotive design.

F1 should only have a symbolic role supporting technologies that promote fuel efficiency.

Thanks, and thats the point of my project. In fact another part is HERS, which I may open a thread about too, if I don't find one already with it.

SOrry for my insistance, but I'm a bit desperate at the moment with it lol

[WhiteBlue]

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3619&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=125

there are plenty of references in that thread

[J-Raid]

Thanks WhiteBlue for the link.

Will take a look carefully at that thread and see if I find what I'm looking for about HERS.

[riff_raff]

J-Raid,

I understand that you are trying to compile a trade study that quantifies the exhaust emissions resulting from an F1 race. But I guess I didn't do a good job of making my point about the subject. My point was this- quantifying the exhaust emissions produced by F1 engines during a race in order to support a hypothesis that proposes GP racing needs to be more "green" is sort of silly, and completely misinterprets what F1 racing truly is. F1 racing is, first and foremost, an entertainment business that generates billions of dollars in revenues each year. It is not a politically correct role model. F1 cars use screaming, flame-spewing piston engines because they provide great entertainment value. F1 could require the use of cars that are totally emissions-free and powered by solar cells, but no one would watch the races, and the FIA would make no money. The world of entertainment (including auto racing) is driven entirely by profits. The FIA would switch to electric F1 cars overnight if they thought it would increase their profits.

As for the mis-guided notion that auto racing improves production car technology, nothing could be further from the truth. The automotive technologies used in F1 cars comes from production automobiles. Developing core automotive technologies costs far more money and takes far more time than any F1 team could ever afford.

Finally, what most people fail to realize, is that most of the key technologies currently employed in F1 cars were originally developed for military applications. Carbon brakes and clutches, digital engine controls, ABS, drive-by-wire, composite structures, titanium alloys, digital CAD, CFD and FEA codes, all were originally developed with military funding. The current F1 car is mostly a by-product of the cold war arms race.

Sorry to keep beating a dead horse. But thanks for your patience.
Regards,
Terry

[WhiteBlue]

Riff Raff ist quite right with most of the statement he makes. He only misses the finer points.

In F1 as in GP racing before there have always been performance limiting elements. Otherwise performance would have outgrown what humans can safely tolerate in operations and eben more in accident situations.

In the past 15 years the safety idea was the most decisive element in determining the nature of the performance limitations with cost creeping in over the last 3-4 years. That does not mean that the formula can not have other objectives like entertainment, road car relevance and fuel efficiency. In fact road car relevance and fuel efficiency are not exclusive at all.

With every development in F1 performance is found and to keep cars in a safe zone performance is regularly slashed. As long as the goals of being entertaining are fullfilled there is nothing that would stop F1 to put fuel efficiency at the top of it's agenda. it would help the manufacturers and would please the motorists who can profit from inventions made in F1 that could trickle down to production technology.

A good example for a potentiallly beneficial technology is the Williams fly wheel. Who knows what they will find when they put their minds to HERS and other technologies because engine RPM and downforce are locked.