What causes an airplane to leave a white trail?
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This post was last edited by zhangyong6404 on 2009-7-24 at 11:54. I have a question that isn’t related to the chemical industry: I often see planes leaving trails in the sky; what causes those white trails to appear in the blue sky?
That is water vapor. Many chemical plant chimneys also emit such gases. It looks like white smoke
One possibility is the use of colored or white spray provided on board the aircraft; another possibility is the condensation of water vapor from the exhaust gases at the back of the aircraft. However, this depends on the humidity and temperature in the air, so not all aircraft have this feature.
Because the temperature is low at high altitudes, this is the result of steam being condensed
Ah! Isn’t that the gas emitted when an airplane takes off?
Well, it’s actually clouds – clouds created by airplanes: lol. The temperature at high altitudes is relatively low, so the steam generated by the airplane engines condenses immediately into small liquid droplets. These droplets gather together and that’s what forms the clouds. Haha, it’s what you see there
It should be a jet plane, right?
The hot gas generated by the combustion of fuel in jet engines contains a high level of moisture, as aviation kerosene burns to produce mainly carbon dioxide and water vapor. When this hot gas comes into contact with the cold air at high altitudes, condensation occurs; this is similar to the misty condensation that forms when hot air from a cooling tower enters colder air.
Water vapor condenses, just like clouds...
It’s water vapor; as the airplane flies, it releases hot carbon dioxide and water, which cool down rapidly in the air and then liquefy into water droplets. From the ground, this appears as white smoke. However, this is only available on high-speed fighter jets, because ordinary commercial planes consume very little fuel in the air and rely mainly on buoyancy. So you generally don’t see white lines on commercial airplanes.