CHED 1141

It has been reported that motorcycles collectively emit approximately 16 times more hydrocarbons and 3 times more carbon monoxide than automobiles. To introduce students to an environmental issue and also to instrumental analysis, a laboratory experiment is being developed to analyze the emissions from Honda motorcycles (1100 and 1800 cc's) and a Honda automobile. A technique will be developed to obtain a representative gaseous sample from the exhaust and a method will be developed for GC/MS analysis. Product identification will be made using the NIST library and using standard compounds. The flow rate of emissions will be measured for each vehicle and utilized with the GC/MS data to obtain grams of CO and hydrocarbons per hour. The results from 12 students performing this experiment in an Instrumental Analysis Laboratory class will presented. Since current legislation is pending in the U.S. to regulate motorcycle emissions, this experiment will be beneficial to the student's education.