Black carbon, or soot, is a fine particulate matter produced by incomplete combustion processes. It contributes to global warming by blocking infrared heat emissions. It has a short lifespan but is responsible for up to 40% of radiation lockup. Human activities like burning wood, coal, and diesel engines produce black carbon. Recent research shows it is the second largest contributor to global warming after carbon dioxide. Reducing emissions can be achieved by improving heating and cooking technology, air pollution controls, and reducing deforestation. Scrubbers and LPG stoves are practical solutions. Black carbon also contributes to melting glaciers.
Black carbon (BC) is a very fine form of particulate matter based on the element carbon produced by incomplete combustion processes and is often commonly referred to as soot. As of 2009, it has begun to be regarded as a major contributor to global warming by the scientific community, where it can block infrared heat emissions from the Earth’s atmosphere into space. Estimates are that black carbon is responsible for 10% to 40% of all radiation lockup, although it has only a short life span of a few weeks in the upper atmosphere compared to a greenhouse gas like carbon dioxide which can persist for up to a century in the atmosphere before it is chemically degraded. The main human activities that produce carbon black aerosols are the burning of wood and vegetation, the use of coal for energy production and the operation of diesel engines. In the United States, for example, as of 2011, 90% of all BC emissions are produced in the transportation sector by diesel trucks.
The element carbon forms bonds with many other elements in nature, and black carbon itself can take many different forms. Unlike stable compounds such as black diamond carbon or black carbon steel, however, atmospheric black carbon is a form of the element that is usually loosely bound to organic molecules based on the starting material from which it took origin. Where it contains a graphite-like microcrystalline structure, it can absorb visible light rays and longer wavelength infrared light known as heat radiation, which normally escape into space from the upper atmosphere and prevent the planet from overheating.
Recent research in the 21st century has revealed that black carbon emissions are the second largest contributor to global warming after that of carbon dioxide gas. They are also seen as an easily reducible source of pollution due to the material’s short lifetime in the atmosphere. Improving the efficiency of heating equipment or cooking technology in developing countries, as well as air pollution controls on coal-fired power plants and diesel engines could rapidly reduce BC pollution rates on a large scale.
Diesel vehicles and industrial plants can be equipped with scrubbers that can prevent up to 70% of black carbon emissions over an eight-year particulate trap lifetime. Replacing stoves in countries such as India and China, where burning coal or other biomass is widely practiced, with liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) stoves is also seen as a practical and cost-effective way to reduce emissions carbon black. Since soot is a major contributor to respiratory ailments, this would also improve the health of those affected by air pollution from BC stoves.
Studies in 2009 in the Arctic and Antarctic and 2010 in the Himalayan mountain range revealed that carbon black is a major contributing factor to melting glaciers. This is despite the fact that BC emissions primarily originate in tropical regions, with East Asian nations being the top producers of the pollutant by volume. A significant factor in black carbon emission rates is that of deforestation in tropical rainforest regions. Reducing deforestation is seen as a more easily mitigated source of pollution than previous attempts to reduce production levels of global warming gases such as carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide, which are unavoidable by-products of industry and networks of world transport.
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