Archive for Coal
Did You Know Coal Is Used To Make Electricity in Texas?
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Most people know this by now but it is the raw natural resource of coal that makes a lot of the electricity in Texas. The primary issue with creating new coal power plants in Texas has to do with the mercury pollution a coal power plant can give off in a community where the power plant is located. No. U.S. stream is uncontaminated by mercury pollution, according to a new analysis by the U.S. Geologic Survey. That means wild fish caught in even the most pristine streams in Texas may be tainted with unsafe levels of a potent neurotoxin that can attack the developing brains of children, leading to permanent damage.
Although coal power plants make our electricity in Texas at very cheap prices we can afford we still need to be careful that the coal technology we use is updated. We can’t continue to spread airborne neurotoxins like mercury into our air that pollute our Texas water. Mercury can have devastating effects on our children in small doses and it only gets worse as a child who has been effected ages.
The way a coal power plant makes electricity is by having some kind of rotating machinery used to convert the heat energy of combustion into mechanical energy, which then operate an electrical generator. This rotating machinery is known as a turbine. Some of the less harmful pollutants or potentially not harmful at all are excess heat and carbon (CO2). The harmful pollutants we need to continue to reduce and get rid of completely come from the flue gas from combustion of the coal. When the flue gas is discharged to the air the plant pollutes it with nitrogen, nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, and (in the case of coal-fired plants) fly ash and mercury.
Until the US government, senators, and state representatives can make a clear case about how coal fired power plants can be safe to the public it will be hard for people in Texas to accept new coal power plants to make our electricity. We all want cheap electric power and I know of no other cheaper way other than nuclear power to create it than coal power. Until the scientists figure out a good solution lets continue to press for upgrades and retrofits to old coal power plants or the creation of new ones in order to take offline old outdated plants. Wind energy and solar panels are insignificant in offering another primary source for our electricity power so we need to keep looking at ways to make coal and natural gas power safer for the state of Texas.
Fire up the coal plant, your MAC is an energy vacuum.
Posted by: | CommentsThe metro-sexual MAC idealists are melting the icebergs
The digital age is an energy hog. All of you apple computer snobs trying to save the environment are actually contributing to melting the icebergs and creating coal fired smog and smoke in our cities. Sure, your computer is not as bad at using electricity as say an air-conditioner but there are enough blogging idealists out there trying to save the environment to cause an energy vacuum that takes all that stored clean natural gas out of surplus and causes those coal plants to fire back up.
Is this a refrigerator or a computer
The money saved in using more efficient computers is far less then the money lost and energy burned by the pace of a large growing number of nerdy idealistic bloggers of the Al Gore persuasion. The PC power required to do some of the intensive things we require on our computers requires so much state of the art chips and processors that everything is spinning and running faster then it has ever before. Our computers will eventually approach the energy consumption of a refrigerator if our demand for the latest technology continues. Imagine tens of thousands of Al Gore wannabe’s with a computer using the energy of a mini-refrigerator typing away about saving a seal or an iceberg. This would be ironic but we are closing in on reality as the energy demand in a computer doubles about every two years.
Energy demanded beyond your Apple PC
The Hubs, Repeaters, Networks, ISP’s, and data warehouses required to keep the dot coms running your blog to save the environment adds additional electricity demand. Moving back and forth from desktop to dot com and back requires even more electricity and then the domino effect just continues on. The factories that put these steel machines together use about 1% of the United States’ electricity feeding even more into this energy monster. For those of you that think the ability to work from home instead of driving to work is helping, well it is not enough to keep up with the energy demand of our technology needs. We were expecting a digital age providing unlimited benefits by providing the information we need at a moments notice but we have skimmed over the powerful effect it will have now and in the future on the electric grid. Don’t be fooled, your blog and the hours you spend each day with your computer working on it could be making things worse rather then better.