Inside the Power Plant Fueling America’s Drought

Re:Inside the Power Plant Fueling America’s Drought by aftbit on Tuesday June 16, 2015 @05:22PM (#9728780)

"It consumes 22,000 tons of coal and emits 44,000 tons of carbon daily."

How does that work out? Shouldn't mass be conserved?

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Re:Inside the Power Plant Fueling America’s Drought by mikeash on Tuesday June 16, 2015 @05:28PM (#9728815)

I assume "carbon" is short for carbon dioxide here, so you get mass contribution from the air consumed in the process.

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Re:Inside the Power Plant Fueling America’s Drought by aftbit on Tuesday June 16, 2015 @05:43PM (#9728890)

That means the plant consumes 20 billion liters (30 million kilograms) of oxygen in a day.[1] That's insane. Just shows you how huge Earth must be for that to happen and me to still be able to breathe. :)

[1]: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=liters+of+oxygen+in+440...

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Re:Inside the Power Plant Fueling America’s Drought by JoeAltmaier on Tuesday June 16, 2015 @05:32PM (#9728835)

The 'O' in 'CO2'. C is 12; O is 16. I'm surprised its only 2:1 instead of 3:1 (or more accurately 44:12)

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Re:Inside the Power Plant Fueling America’s Drought by danmaz74 on Tuesday June 16, 2015 @05:47PM (#9728910)

Probably because carbon isn't actually pure carbon

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Re:Inside the Power Plant Fueling America’s Drought by rbobby on Tuesday June 16, 2015 @06:32PM (#9729115)

I think the 44k tons daily is a typo. Earlier in the article it said 16k tons annually (in atmosphere... so maybe the rest is ash).

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Re:Inside the Power Plant Fueling America’s Drought by MaysonL on Tuesday June 16, 2015 @08:35PM (#9729496)

16 million tons annually

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Re:Inside the Power Plant Fueling America’s Drought by rbobby on Wednesday June 17, 2015 @03:58PM (#9734820)

Doh. And 16 million tons annually is about 44,000 tons daily.

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