roccman wrote:A 1500 MW (power to supply 1.5 million homes) plant will produce around 500-600 pounds of Hg per year. Most is captured, but around 120-150 pounds are released into the atomosphere. Link
Additionally, 9,000 pounds of selenium are released each year from a 1500 MW plant.
A 1500 MW also produces 12.5 million tons of C02 annually. CO2 Seq. has never been proven effective or economical.
Fly ash from a 1500 MW plant is somewhere in the area of 1-2 million tons million tons per year.
You link does not come up. Are you referring to a coal gasification CC plant?
roccman wrote:Read more here JB:
Desert Rock Emissions
Sithe says that Desert Rock will be a flagship for a new generation of “environmentally friendly” coal-fired plants. According to Desert Rock Energy vice-president Nathan Plagans, fly ash from the plant will be sold to make concrete, reducing the plant’s solid waste output dramatically, and the plant will use as little water as possible.
Are you referring to flyash produced or flyash captured? It’s obviously better to have a higher amount of flyash captured, that is a good thing not a bad thing. You also need to take into account that when a plant builds a scrubber, they burn cheaper, high sulfur coal because they are scrubbing the sulfur. This sometimes produces flyash from coal that the plant was not designed to burn so you run into opacity problems (I am currently troubleshooting those problems at my plant), but there are solutions to these problems.
roccman wrote:Sithe has also made a voluntary agreement to reduce mercury emissions by 80 percent above what the pollution permit requires. But the Sierra Club, another national environmental group, estimates that the plant will put 114 to 555 pounds of mercury a year into the local environment, along with tons of other toxins. Regional waterways including the San Juan River are already subject to fish warnings because of high mercury content.
This is a terrible link. They are talking about a plant that is proposed to take advantage of laxed environmental standards on a reservation that is exempt from the EPA. This plant is completely on the other side of the spectrum from the plant referred to in the OP. Do understand the difference between the two plants? If so, why post that link?