Noxious Gases 101

[gordon_s1942]

I wanted a quick course on the properties of Carbon Monoxide please.
I know it is an Odourless, Colourless, tastless Gas produced generaly by combustion of a fuel and while it isnt posionous, it causes death by the lack of breathable Oxygen.
Is it heavier, same or lighter than air,does it disipate/absorb easily in an airflow of 'normal air'?
Would there be a table of figures to make an educated guess based on the cubic area of a room and a device burning a fuel, what ventilation would be consided neccassary ?

[trash]

Carbon Monoxide is Nasty Toxic. Yes it prevents hemoglobin from uptaking oxygen. Hemoglobin has a greater affinity for Carbon Monoxide and because the binding energy of the chemical bonds is much higher, the body cannot metabolise or exhale it. Therefore very small amounts of Carbon Monoxide are lethal.

Rather than guess, buy a gas detector off ebay. They're reasonably cheap and the measure CO accurately. The detector will beep when you reach dangerous levels and squeal at a fatal level.

Telstra are dumping their flashy small units and going back to the big old clunkers, so you will soon find a lot of those units on the surplus market very cheap.

Gas detectors work on pressure. So if you have pure oxygen at 2 atm pressure, it will read 200%.
Air at 2atm will read 42% O2 and 158% N2

I did a gas detector course many years ago. I had a workmate come in from outside, he had put his smoke out. I made him breath into the unit.
It said he should be dead.

[gordon_s1942]

Trash, is that squeal loud enough to wake the Dead??

Soorry but I couldnt resist it but thanks and I never thought of getting one, shows what I know.

[ozchips]

so you want to know how to do the density of the gas in a room ?
density = mass /volume
in the book for the woodburner it should give you very approx figures of CO2 output
eg grams per litre of exhaust
you can then work out the density of CO2 in the air
the other ways to do it are below , but you would need two figures
to work out the volume of your room , just do width x length x height for volume
remember to make all measurements the same eg cm3 so everything works easily

Density = volume/mass
Volume x density = mass
Volume = mass/density

[trash]

what about burn efficiency ?
The availability of oxygen is going to determine how much monoxide, free carbon as soot or carbon dioxide is created. The partial pressures of the various gases (including oxygen and nitrogen) is the key factor in determining the toxicity of the air in the room.

[ozchips]

would also depend on what is burning
different types of wood have different burn efficiencies , some produce less CO2 etc etc , is the wood damp or green ? is it hardwood or softwood .
you could really only give yourself a rough guide