In 1980 the U.S. government began what would be a decades - long effort to grapple with the problem of acid rain caused by
sulfur emissions from coal - fired power stations.
«As the Clean Air Act and amendments have taken effect there has been a reduction in
sulfur emissions from coal combustion, so that the amount of atmospheric sulfur deposited each year is only 25 percent of what it used to be.
Not exact matches
Switching
from coal to natural gas would reduce
sulfur dioxide
emissions by more than 90 percent and nitrogen oxide
emissions by more than 60 percent.
Instead, with the imposition of a cap - and - trade program, O'Connor said, people looked at the sources of
coal and realized they could obtain it
from different parts of the country with lower
sulfur, cutting
emissions at less cost.
Many of his mistakes are big ones: he bungles the issues involving reserves and resources that are critical to his core argument about oil remaining cheap; he drastically misleads his readers about the extent to which
sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide
emissions from coal - burning have been reduced; he trivializes the climate - change risks
from coals carbon dioxide
emissions by suggesting we know the impacts will be worth only 0.64 cents per kilowatt - hour.
I criticized this statement, noting that the actual
emissions from U.S.
coal - burning power plants declined only
from 16.1 million tons to 12.4 million tons between 1980 and 1998 in the case of
sulfur dioxide and
from 6.1 million tons to 5.4 million tons between 1980 and 1998 in the case of nitrogen oxides (mostly emitted as NO, not NO2, but by convention measured as tons of NO2 - equivalent).
«Living downwind of
coal - fired power plant could increase risk of low birth weight: Study found that babies born during 1990 - 2006 to mothers living as far as 20 to 30 miles away
from proven emitter of
sulfur dioxide
emissions had 6.5 percent greater risk of low birth weight and 17.12 percent greater risk of very low birth weight.»
It's been a quarter century since government regulations limiting
emissions of
sulfur and nitrogen oxides
from coal - fired power plants began to neutralize the problem of acid rain, but lakes in the northeastern U.S. and eastern Canada have been sluggish to recover.
The new study, published last week in the journal Environmental Research Letters, showed that
emissions of
sulfur dioxide, a common air pollutant released during
coal and fossil fuel combustion, increased
from 2000 to 2006, after which they started to decline.
China is the world's largest SO2 emitter, mostly due to the burning of high -
sulfur coal in its many
coal - fired power plants, which lack the technology used in many other countries to remove
sulfur from smoke stack
emissions.
In June 1989, President George H. W. Bush proposed the use of a cap - and - trade system to cut by half
sulfur dioxide
emissions from coal - fired power plants and consequent acid rain.
plants use «scrubbers» to clean
Sulfur from the smoke... scrubbers and NOx removal equipment are also able to reduce mercury
emissions from some types of
coal... (EPA) has set tighter mercury limits for the future.»
would let a plant meet clean air act goals without scrubbers or other pollution control equipment,...» A
coal flue scrubber removes 90 percent of the
sulfur dioxide
emissions from the burning of
coal.
Steadily improving air pollution controls have sent
sulfur dioxide
emissions from U.S.
coal - fired power plants tumbling by more than 40 % and particulate
emissions (the alleged cause of asthma) by more than 90 % since 1970, says air quality expert Joel Schwartz, even as
coal use tripled.
For
coal - fire boilers in thermal plants, the maximum allowed
sulfur dioxide
emission in the specially controlled regions is halved to 50 milligrams per cubic meter,
from the 100 milligrams per cubic meter that is currently permitted in most of the country, said the report.
Fossil Fuel is a generic term that isn't quite correct Natural Gasoline is a distilled derivative of oil but almost all ofit is manufactured
from cracked and recombined oil derivativeswhile natural gasoline is further refined intoPropane, butane, Proproline (a plastics feed stock), and Natural gasand also separates out
sulfur (for fertilizer and explosives) Gasoline can be made
from coal («Coaline») or
from organic matter («Bio-fuel») but uses a few of oil based feed stocks instead tomake «Sythiline» (artificial gasoline) This gasoline is actually cleaner burning then natural gas with allit's «flare offs» (butane, propane, propoline,
sulfur) used in theearly 19th century because it is manufactured only with essentialHydrocarbons Diesel fuel is also becoming more and more Manufactured instead ofdistilled as demand for it rises but improvements in Hydro cleaningis allowing for diesel with no volatile chemicals like
sulfur andmercury (taken out for petro - chemical feedstock to make fertilizerand thermometers) In both cases what you have is pure hydro - carbons, a carbon atomwith hydrogen atoms attached to it In the case of gasoline there is CH1, cH7, CH11 When in a combustion engine the gasoline is sprayed into the pistonafter being mixed with air and the drive of the engine compressesthe the chamber filled with the gasoline mist until it's full downstoke then the spark plug causes the Exothermic reaction... which isthe conversion of the potential energy in the gasoline mist to heatand force, with the force side of that equation shooting the pistonupward and the top of the stroke kicking what's left of thecaramelized gasoline mist out into the Emission control box If the Emulsion control box wasn't there to filter out the burntgasoline particles, any potential additives and volatile chemicalsthen the caramelized gunk hitting air would create CARBON MONOXIDEin the cooler then the heat of the engine difference CARBON MONOXIDE can also become a problem if the
Emissions controlBox filter, air filters or muffler filters is worn or damaged.
Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide
emissions, however, increase immediately
from the increase in
coal - fired power generation and stay elevated throughout the life of the policy.
Some studies suggested that
emissions from rapidly developing countries in Asia could be largely to blame — India and China, for example, are thought to have ramped up their
sulfur dioxide output by about 60 percent over the decade through
coal burning.
Even with much decreased numbers, the report says
sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide
emissions from coal power plants will «continue to take a significant toll on the health and longevity of millions of Americans.»
Enron had banked on trading permits for carbon dioxide
emissions, which would have been based upon the existing permit system for
sulfur dioxide
emissions from coal - burning electric power plants.
In 1977, the government made its first stab at confronting the issue, recommending that all new
coal - fired plants have scrubbers to remove
sulfur dioxide
from their
emissions.
More importantly, I've heard people arguing that the decreased warming is the result of increased
sulfur dioxide
emissions from Chinese
coal.
They argued that much of the EPA program's apparent success in reducing SO2
emissions from power plants was due to simultaneous railroad deregulation which reduced the cost of delivering low
sulfur coal strip - mined in the west.
Also this week, the Sierra Club released new maps demonstrating that
sulfur dioxide
emissions from the Danskammer
coal plant could cause violations of the EPA's National Ambient Air Quality Standard across six counties and over Storm King State Park, Clarence Fahnestock Memorial State Park and Bear Mountain State Park.