Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

Re:Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life by tgflynn on Wednesday June 22, 2022 @11:46AM (#31837577)

> But the biggest reduction in CO2 emissions during the past 15 years (over 60%) has come from switching from coal to natural gas.

Can someone explain the chemistry of this ? I thought perfect combustion produces CO2 and that burning natural gas is closer to that ideal than what you get with coal (where you also get CO and probably lots of other stuff). So I would expect that producing a given amount of energy by burning natural gas would produce at least as much CO2 as that some amount produced from burning coal.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life by Gordonjcp on Wednesday June 22, 2022 @11:59AM (#31837765)

From a very simplistic "high school chemistry" point of view, coal is mostly carbon, natural gas is mostly hydrogen.

Burning coal will produce lots of carbon dioxide (and other nasties because of things like sulphur compounds but let's ignore that for now) and very little water. Burning methane will produce lots of water and carbon dioxide.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life by tgflynn on Wednesday June 22, 2022 @12:13PM (#31837939)

Hmm, I'd always assumed that most of the energy from burning natural has came from the oxidation of the carbon, not the hydrogen, but maybe that's not the case.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life by ktpecot on Wednesday June 22, 2022 @01:04PM (#31838707)

Methane has roughly twice the energy density of coal.

[ Parent | on HN ]