Just that. Is the amount increasing, or is it, as I suspect, entering into chemical reactions and becoming part of something else?
If the device in question has a catalytic converter (as most cars do) it turns in carbon dioxide before it goes out the tail pipe.
Catalytic converters convert most of it into Carbon Dioxide, as Regallag_The_Axe already posted. The carbon monoxide that manages to make it through the catalytic converter goes up into the atmosphere along with other sources of carbon monoxide (power plants and other combustion sources, fires, both natural and man-made, as well as volcanic activity). Carbon monoxide in the atmosphere ends up getting converted into carbon dioxide, with a side effect of producing more ozone through all of the various chemical reactions involved.
[QUOTE=wikipedia]
Carbon monoxide is, along with aldehydes, part of the series of cycles of chemical reactions that form photochemical smog. It reacts with hydroxyl radical (•OH) to produce a radical intermediate •HOCO, which transfers rapidly its radical hydrogen to O2 to form peroxy radical (HO2•) and carbon dioxide (CO2).[46] Peroxy radical subsequently reacts with nitrogen oxide (NO) to form nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and hydroxyl radical. NO2 gives O(3P) via photolysis, thereby forming O3 following reaction with O2. Since hydroxyl radical is formed during the formation of NO2, the balance of the sequence of chemical reactions starting with carbon monoxide and leading to the formation of ozone is:
CO + 2O2 + hν → CO2 + O3
(where hν refers to the photon of light absorbed by the NO2 molecule in the sequence)
[/QUOTE]
Cat converters in cars get about 90% of the CO. CO is produced more when the engine is cold - alcohols in the fuel reduce CO
engineer_comp_geek, I knew that CO dissolves in the atmosphere, but as soon as I came in here I forgot. It’s like I get stupider when I come into GQ with an answer.