Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

I am currently researching methods to detect carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide emission from fuels such as diesel, ethanol, bio char, algae-based bio fuels and etc. After about a full week of searching online I can't seem to find any method that is feasible for a high school student. Almost everything I come upon deals with using a real engine or some large mechanism to test the fuels for efficiency not carbon dioxide/carbon monoxide emission. Anything that does have to deal with carbon dioxide/carbon monoxide emission requires me to buy the article. I haven't been to the local university library because I have no way of getting there. What I have found out about is incomplete combustion. One method is that I could use a flask or something with a small amount of fuel in it. After lighting it I would then quickly put a balloon on top of the flask, the problem here is I can't really tell 'how much' of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide is produced from the fuel. I thought of massing the balloon before and after but it would still be complicated, doesn't provide an exact figure and probably not accurate. I also have to take in account the gas already in the atmosphere that would be used by the flame inside the flask which would skew my results. Another method would be using a carbon dioxide sensor (one that plugs into the laptop that comes in a kit) but I won't be able to detect carbon monoxide. It also isn't a novel method so its not a method I would choose. I've also thought of taking apart a carbon monoxide detector that's used around in the house and use the parts of that, but I don't know much about the mechanics of the sensors. Is there a 'classic experiment' on this topic? I would appreciate it if anyone could post ideas for me.

Also is this allowed by the safety committee's regulations because of the highly flammable fuels?

Thanks, snoh

If I'm reading between the lines and deciphering your area of investigation accurately and it is "internal combustion engine combustion byproducts for various fuels", then you have chosen a really difficult area of investigation...

Various internal combustion engines have their designs tuned for specific fuels. Minor changes in the shapes of the intake system, combustion chamber, exhaust porting, timing, along with fuel/air mixture, compression, fuel temperature, air temperature, air pressure, combustion chamber temperature control, dynamic load, speed, and probably at least another 20 factors will affect the combustion efficiency. Additionally, all of these factors interact with each other.

Test tube combustion experiments may provide some clues as to what the potential for how clean a fuel can be burned in test tube conditions; however, how close you can get to that potential for a given fuel and what the cost of modifying and maintaining an internal combustion engine for that fuel is another whole area of investigation.

To a large extent, the test tube experiments and the internal combustion engine experiments represent the difference between science and engineering.

I've ignored the safety aspects as you really need to refine what you want to try and accomplish before attempting to come up with an experiment which can be evaluated for safety issues.
There are significant differences between fuels appropriate for deisel compression ignition and spark plug ignition and they have significantly different safety issues. Most deisel fuels have a significantly higher flash point (require higher temperature to get explosive ignition) so they are easier to come up with a safe way of experimenting with.