On Vehicular Emissions of Petrol and Diesel Engines

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The rise in the number of vehicles in Nigeria has significantly increased the vehicular emissions in the country especially in towns and cities. Some studies in the area of vehicular emissions of petrol and diesel engine vehicles concentrating on CO and CO2 existed. This study in addition to CO and CO2 emissions characteristics attempt to study the O2 emission of both types of engines. The analysis of data conducted on the emissions of petrol and diesel engine vehicles using a two-sample equal variance one-tail t-test showed that there were significant differences between the data of CO for the two types of engines (p=4.86x10-6), for CO2 (p=1.77x10-14) and O2 (p=1.65x10-19). The CO and CO2 emissions were consistently higher for petrol engines as compared to diesel engine vehicles while O2 was consistently lower. Pearson Correlation Coefficient for age and CO of petrol engine vehicles showed that there was very low negative correlation (r= -0.27). Same test showed that there was no correlation between age and CO2 (r=0.00) as well as age and O2 (r= -0.02). Similarly, for diesel engine vehicles there was very low positive correlation between age and CO (r= 0.29), no correlation between age and CO2 (r= -0.03) as well as a very low positive correlation between age and O2 (r= 0.25).These results suggest that the rise in manufacture and distribution of diesel engine vehicles can be further strengthened if its higher emission of O2 is considered in addition to lower emissions of poisonous CO and green house gas CO2. It may also be stated that emissions from vehicles irrespective of type of type of engine is independent of age.