Gasoline $3.00 a gallon...how soon ???

[_RaT_]

As much as I deserve it. One of these days I'm going to find me a piece and see what it burns like. How do you get it started anyway?

 

[slowrev]

The amazing this to me is that gasoline price increases follow very quickly behind increases in the price of crude. However it takes at least a couple of months for that more expensive crude to be turned into gasoline ???

 

[db2]

<font color="blue">One of these days I'm going to find me a piece and see what it burns like. How do you get it started anyway? <font color="blue">

<font color="black">It kinda burns like a charcoal brickette used for the older style of barbecue. You need a small wood fire to get it going. There are toxic gases produced when burning so make sure it's done outside. </font>

 

[DaveNay]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( As much as I deserve it. One of these days I'm going to find me a piece and see what it burns like. How do you get it started anyway? )</font>

When burned in a power plant, I believe the coal is actually crushed to a very fine powder, and then "injected" into the fire box, much the same way fuel oil is on a regular furnace.

Dave

 

[Cactus]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( <font color="blue"> When burned in a power plant, I believe the coal is actually crushed to a very fine powder, and then "injected" into the fire box, much the same way fuel oil is on a regular furnace. </font> )</font>

You are right..the coal is pulverized into a fine dust and a conveying air carries it to the firebox where it is combusted.

But you can burn lumps of coal in a fireplace/wood stove etc...just like a piece of firewood.

 

[AutoUnionTypeC]

We all should be thankful for our nations abundance of coal and hence coal plants. If it wasn't for the coal plants stepping up we would have a 300-dollar a megawatt thread going as well as this gasoline thread. Through most this past year coal plants have been running to near capacity while many NG plants were idle, just too expensive to run. Clean coal technology is real; typically the plant I work at removes 90-98% of its SO2 emissions via a wet scrubber. Long story short............a limestone liquor is injected into the path of the exiting flue gas, the limestone binds with the SO2 and then falls into sump were we "force" oxidation converting the limstone/SO2 byproduct into saleable gypsum. Our plant also sports an SCR, which uses a catalyst to dramatically reduce our nitrous oxide emissions. Having said all this, I think it’s fair to say a plant such as the one I work at is the exception rather than the rule. Still, many older coal plants are now being retrofitted with clean coal technologies and all new coal plants are very clean……… relatively speaking that is. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
Regards, Jamie

 

[milkman]

Can't believe it, gotta wake up, I'm dreamin again and I'm truckin and the CB is going full blast /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

 

[Cactus]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( <font color="blue"> Can't believe it, gotta wake up, I'm dreamin again and I'm truckin and the CB is going full blast </font> )</font>

10/4 good buddy...... /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[johnday]

Autounion; RonJHall suggested I get into this thread. As it turns out, the subject appears to have come around to Fossil Fuel Power Plants. I really didn't care about the gas prices that much so I wasn't reading this thread.
Any way, I'm at the DTE Monroe Power Plant. [My plants bigger than yours] /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif We also have SCR's installed on two of our Units. Each is good for about 765 net megawatts. We are also in the process of selecting scrubbers that are to be installed on one of the units to be operational sometime in 2007. I'm one of the guys that just came back from New Brunswick to visit a couple plants with the scrubbers made by B&W.
Someone mentioned coal ground up to a fine powder and being injected into the furnace. Right you are, it's about the consistincy of face powder when "blown" into the firebox. We blend our coal for sulfur content due to EPA regulations.
The Selective Catalyst Reactors [SCR] are used to reduce the amount of NOx we release. That's that yellow haze you see on sunny days, it's not sulfur like most people think, the NOx reacts with sunlight and becomes the yellow haze.
As far as toxic gasses being released from burning coal, guess what, ANYTHING that is combusted produces toxic gasses, coal, nat gas, wood, paper, even metals like steel and iron. There is actually no known material that can't burn, even asbestos with enough Btu's added.
Natural gas? The only reason that it's being used for power generation is because it's cleaner than coal, the plants are cheaper to build, and they don't require massive amounts of anti-pollution equipment. But, on the same token, gas doesn't have the Btu's per pound that coal does, in other words it takes more pounds of gas to generate the same amount of heat as a pound of coal.

Man, I'm glad I'm almost done. Anybody in the area want to go through a real powerplant? Just PM me, I'll give you a one on one tour. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

But yet, I really wish diesel prices would return to some kind of reality. /forums/images/graemlins/mad.gif

 

[db2]

<font color="blue"> ANYTHING that is combusted produces toxic gasses, </font> and that's why we should all have CO2 detectors in our homes.

John thanks for the insight into electrical generation by coal. Interesting stuff.