Question

1. Can you tell me what the measurement is in electricity is when calculating the CO2 per ton.

I know that the use of 1 ton of coal will produce 2,460 kWh. So you can run a 100 watt light bulb for a year on a ton of coal and that produces 3.740 tones of CO2.

Seems kind of wrong doesn't it. Coal is one of the worst offenders of CO2.

So I guess we have to think about a server that is using a 250 watt power supply left on all year and if the energy comes from a coal burning electric station then that one server would produce 6,150 kWh or 2.5 tons of coal.

This would generate approximately 9 tons of CO2 (if the coal was pure or almost pure carbon)

I just have to say wow that is a lot of Co2.

Answer 1

Approximately 1500 Units (1Unit =1KWhr) is generated per ton of coal in a Supercritical 660MW unit. The parameters used are approximately:

a. Coal calorific value (Design value) = 3300 KCal/kg

b. Total Plant Efficiency = 38.5%

However the value of CO2 generated can based on several factors like the Coal grade, Moisture and ashes. Generally for a good quality coal approximately 2.82 ton of CO2 is generated per Ton of coal. So in practical condition we get only 1500/2.86 = 524 units(KWHr) per ton of CO2.

(Note : The above values has been provided by a Public sector Thermal power corporation)