Combustion

The use of combustion as a power source has had such a dramatic influence on human society that the period after 1750 has sometimes been called the Fossil Fuel Age. Still, the widespread use of combustion for human applications has always had its disadvantages. Pictorial representations of England during the Industrial Revolution, for example, usually include huge clouds of smoke emitted by the combustion of wood and coal in steam engines.

Today, modern societies continue to face environmental problems created by the prodigious combustion of carbon-based fuels. For example, one product of any combustion reaction in the real world is carbon monoxide, a toxic gas that is often detected at dangerous levels in urban areas around the world. Oxides of sulfur, produced by the combustion of impurities in fuels, and oxides of nitrogen, produced at high temperature, also have deleterious effects, often in the form of acid rain and smog. Even carbon dioxide itself, the primary product of combustion, is suspected of causing global climate changes because of the enormous concentrations it has reached in the atmosphere.