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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (315562)	12/14/2006 11:14:21 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1584760

I didn't find any page that directly has the information on either coal burning efficiency or total CO2 release from coal but I did find this - science.howstuffworks.com Your calculations have 2.8*10^12 tons of coal producing 10^13 tons of CO2, or 3.57 times as much CO2 as coal. The "How Stuff Works" page has 1.43 million tons of coal producing 3,700,000 tons of CO2, or 2.59 tons of CO2 per ton of coal. Assuming that page is correct, (unfortunately it doesn't include any calculations, or raw data, or links to sources) it would mean about 72.5% of the carbon from the coal becomes CO2. A noticeable difference but probably not enough to invalidate any point your trying to make. I found another site - "Suppose that your family likes to leave a 100-watt light burning on the back porch for security, and you leave it on eight hours per night, 365 days per year. This bulb will use a total of 292 kWh per year. How much coal must be burned to keep this light on, and how much carbon dioxide is produced? Allowing for a coal-fired power plant’s efficiency, the electricity lost in the power lines, and the energy content of coal, each kWh of electricity delivered to your home requires the burning of 0.77 kg (1.7 pounds) of western coal and produces 1.1 kg (2.4 pounds) of CO2." chemistry.org That only shows 1.42 times the CO2 (by mass) then coal. About 40% of your figure. The different calculations might be assuming different grades of coal, or they might just be in error. Its hard to tell. But even the lowest figures might not be different enough from yours to be significant in this particular discussion.