INDUSTRY NEWS LETTERBOX
Policy People Don’t Get It In the June 2012 issue, the
Washington Alert article (p. 15 ) reports the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed a rule that restricts carbon dioxide emis- sions to not more than 1,000 lb. per megawatt hour for new coal-fired power plants. It appears once again we have policy makers who appear clueless regarding physics, the first and second laws of thermodynam- ics, and other unavoidable facts— enacting impossible and ridiculous policies. To wit: the energy content of
one pound of coal is in the range of 13,000 Btu, with a typical carbon
content in the range of 75-90%. So, every pound of coal burned yields between 0.75 and almost 1 lb. of carbon. To figure out how much carbon
dioxide that generates, you mul- tiply by the ratio of the molecular weights (44 for carbon dioxide/12 for carbon) to arrive at a rough figure of 3 lbs. of carbon dioxide for every pound of coal burned. A little more fancy math reveals that we must therefore burn less than 333 lbs. of coal to get our megawatt- hour. Problem is, that 333 lbs. of coal is only capable of convert- ing into 1.268 megawatt hours of
thermal energy. So, the proposed new coal plant needs to achieve at least 79% thermodynamic efficiency to meet the new rule. Trouble is, the most efficient supercritical coal plants can only achieve about 50- 55% efficiency on their best days. Te new rule is basically impossible to achieve and is just an end-run way of preventing the construction of any new coal-fired power plants. Yet another stroke in the federal government’s unrelenting assault on U.S. manufacturing capability.
Mark Schreiber General Motors
August 2012 MODERN CASTING | 15
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