Posted by Eeyore on June 14, 2008, 12:16 am
clare, at, snyder, dot, ontario, dot, canada wrote:
> >As a practical matter, none of this matters a whit since the air is clean most
> >everywhere except a few pathological places like SoCal and Denver and those
> >places were nasty when the Indians ran things. Just don't try to bullsh*t me
> >about my electric car being zero emission because it isn't. At least not when
> >I'm outside this nice nuclear powered area.
> >
> And the "air sewer" coming up across the great lakes from the Ohio
> Valley that gives Central Ontario some of the worst air quality in
> North America. Mostly from dirty coal fired generating plants.
Scrubbers for coal plants are already seriously 'old tech' now.
The only reason for coal station flues to be emitting serious pollution is
failure
of political policy or will, not failure of technology.
Grahama
Posted by daestrom on June 13, 2008, 6:50 pm
<snip>
> Let's look at the other side, at coal plants. The EPA long ago
> semi-rationalized its regulatory approach to what they call "Best
> Commercial
> Technology" or sometimes "Best Available Technology". That is, they have
> drifted somewhat away from fairyland and now regulate according to what is
> technically and economically possible at the time.
> It simply is not technically possible to control the emissions of a coal
> plant
> to the same degree as an auto engine. That is not to say that coal plants
> are
> dirty. Quite the contrary, what comes out the stack these days is almost
> purely carbon dioxide and water vapor.
> But consider this. With gasoline, neither sulfur nor mercury nor solid
> particulates are even on the radar scope because they simply don't exist
> in
> gasoline. (I don't consider either sulfur or mercury emissions at the
> currently regulated levels to be any problem at all but we're splitting
> hairs
> here.)
> This is when the emission systems are working properly. These systems are
> very high maintenance, the nature of the beasts, and so the regulations
> reflect that. When, say, a particulate precipitator or bag house or
> sulfur
> scrubber goes out, the plant doesn't have to trip off-line. For each type
> of
> malfunction there is a Time To Repair (TTR) time limit during which the
> plant
> can operate. After that limit expires, the plant must shut down or
> throttle
> back, depending on the particular failure. This policy recognizes two
> things:
> 1) emissions equipment breaks a lot and 2) the electricity the plant
> generates
> is too vital to lose arbitrarily.
> When the emission system of a coal plant goes down the plant emits a HUGE
> amount of whatever constituent the system was controlling. If the
> electrostatic precipitator/bag house goes down, the stack billows fly ash.
> If
> the scrubber goes down, the plant emits a yellow plume of sulfur oxides
> gas.
Unfortunately, it's worse than that. A lot of coal plants are
'grandfathered' into the requirements and don't have to upgrade to 'best
technology available' unless the plant undergoes a significant
upgrade/improvement in equipment. So the owners have quite an incentive to
*not* upgrade the plant in any significant way. And just what constitutes
an 'upgrade' is in great debate. Some argue that just replacing turbine
rotors with newer, more efficient designs can trigger a letter from the EPA
demanding they also upgrade the emissions equipment.
Bottom line is a lot of older plants are being operated 'as-is' to avoid the
expense of complying with new emission standards instead of building new
units with more modern technology.
daestrom
Posted by Balanced View on June 13, 2008, 8:18 am
RW Salnick wrote:
> Balanced View wrote:
>> Eeyore wrote:
>>
>>> Neon John wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> On Sun, 08 Jun 2008 23:25:49 +0100, Eeyore wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> LIES ! There is no such thing as a ZERO emission car.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> An electric car is a zero emission car. Unless you have a power
>>>>> plant
>>>>> attached to yours. This is not a lie or a desception.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> So let me get this straight. If I live somewhere else (here my
>>>> power is
>>>> nuclear) and I plug my car into that great long extension cord
>>>> called the grid
>>>> and on the other end of that cord, a coal plant ramps up its firing
>>>> rate just
>>>> a little to charge my batteries, then I'm still driving a zero
>>>> emission car?
>>>> Is that what you're trying to tell me, grasshopper?
>>>>
>>>> Wow.
>>>>
>>>> Can I have some of whatever you're smoking?
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> If only it were that simple.
>>>
>>> hmmm,,, simple being a very suitable word.
>>>
>>> Graham
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> The point is the car isn't emitting anything. According to
>> California's Air Resources Board (CARB), a "Zero-emissions vehicle"
>> is a vehicle that has:
>>
>> * No tailpipe emissions
>> * No evaporative emissions
>> * No onboard emission-control systems that can deteriorate over time
>> * No emissions from gasoline refining or sales
>>
>> You guys can split hairs all you want, even if coal is used to
>> generate the power, the pollution from the plant is less tan and
>> easier to control than in thousands of individual ICE cars.
> Question: When are the enviro-wackos going to allow a new coal-fired
> power plant to be built in California?
> Answer: Never. They want it to be built in Nevada or New Mexico or
> Arizona, but most importantly, out of sight and out of mind, so they
> don't have to face up to the consequences of their actions, and so
> they can continue to feel smugly "green" and all zero-emissiony
If it wasn't for " enviro -wackos" the USA would have the pollution
level of China and third world working conditions.
If it wasn't for California it would be unlikely we would have any air
pollution control at all on American vehicles.
Posted by Eeyore on June 13, 2008, 9:01 am
Balanced View wrote:
> If it wasn't for " enviro-wackos" the USA would have the pollution
> level of China and third world working conditions.
What makes you think that ?
Graham
Posted by Bob F on June 13, 2008, 12:01 pm
> Balanced View wrote:
>> If it wasn't for " enviro-wackos" the USA would have the pollution
>> level of China and third world working conditions.
> What makes you think that ?
You don't remember the resistance to environmental legislation passage?
I remember what the air used to look like, and the color of the rivers. Neither
is the same now.
XML site map
> >everywhere except a few pathological places like SoCal and Denver and those
> >places were nasty when the Indians ran things. Just don't try to bullsh*t me
> >about my electric car being zero emission because it isn't. At least not when
> >I'm outside this nice nuclear powered area.
> >
> And the "air sewer" coming up across the great lakes from the Ohio
> Valley that gives Central Ontario some of the worst air quality in
> North America. Mostly from dirty coal fired generating plants.