How can 1 liter gasoline produce 2 kilogram CO2?

Question

Yesterday I was in a museum (Museon, Den Haag) where was said that 1 liter gasoline produces more then 2 kilogram CO2. Please explain this.

In: Chemistry

Answer 1

The carbon in gasoline reacts with oxygen (O2 weighs ~2.6x as much as the carbon) to make carbon dioxide.

So for every kg of carbon in your fuel, which your fuel will be ~85% carbon by weight, it will make ~2.6kg of carbon.

Since gasoline is about 750 g/L, that means your final amount of CO2 released will be somewhere around

750g/L * 0.85 * (1 + 2.6) = ~2295g of CO2 per Liter of gasoline burned.