Air-Conditioning Cooling Load and Petrol - Ethanol Mixtures in Engines Impact on Global Climate Change

The climate is one of the factors on which the energy required to cool a building depends. Hourly dry-bulb temperature and relative humidity data for fifteen years (1978 - 1992) were obtained for Ilorin and Ikeja. From statistical analysis of the data, it was found that the mean dry bulb temperature and the 1, 2.5 and 5 % design dry-bulb temperature used for air-conditioning cooling load calculation were higher than the corresponding values published in 1974 from statistical analysis of weather data for the fifteen year period of 1951 - 1965. This shows that more energy will be required for cooling buildings if the trend of global warming continues. One way to reduce global warming is by using bio-fuels. A four stroke spark-ignition engine was run on pure gasoline, 5 % ethanol to 95 % gasoline, 10 % ethanol to 90 % gasoline, 15 % ethanol to 85 % gasoline and 20 % ethanol to 80 % gasoline. When the engine ran on pure gasoline, it developed a maximum torque of 10.7 Nm, a brake power of 3141.6 W and a brake thermal efficiency of 25.91 %. Each of these performance parameters reduced as the percentage of ethanol increased. For the 20 % ethanol to 80 % gasoline blend the corresponding values of the performance parameters obtained were 10.2 Nm, 2827.44 W and 21.75 %. Even though the performance of the engine declined as the percentage of ethanol increased, the emission of less green house gases is enough motivation to use bio-fuels.