In: Civil Engineering
1. Consider a 400-MW, 32 percent efficient coal-fired power plant that uses cooling water withdrawn from a nearby river (with an upstream flow of 10-m3/s and temperature 20 °C) to take care of waste heat. The heat content of the coal is 8,000 Btu/lb, the carbon content is 60% by mass, and the sulfur content is 2% by mass.
v. If the cooling water is only allowed to rise in temperature by 10 °C, what flow rate (in m3/s) from the stream would be required? Is this sustainable? What would you recommend?
vi. What would be the river temperature if all the waste heat was transferred to the river water assuming no heat losses during transfer? Would that be a problem? Why or why not.
vii. Estimate the hourly SO2 emissions (in kg/h) from the plant assuming that all the sulfur is oxidized to SO2 during combustion.