In the United States, coal is a fossil fuel, used mainly to fuel the energy need

Question

In the United States, coal is a fossil fuel, used mainly to fuel the energy needed for electric power plants to manufacture electricity. The air pollution caused by burning coal has been linked to health problems and concerns for the general population. Mobile phones and portable electronic devices are rechargeable and mainly use lithium batteries as a power source. These devices must be regularly charged on a continuing basis, depending upon their frequency of use. They are often charged using the electricity generated from coal fired electric power plants. In this exercise, we will discuss the relationship between portable electronic device use, and the amount of mercury produced from burning coal to make the electricity associated with running these portable devices on a regular basis. For your final group presentation as a group online assignment through Blackboard, you are to submit a 20 slide powerpoint presentation that includes the following things. Find a relationship between electricity produced from a coal fired electric power plant and the amount of coal that must be burned to produce this electricity. Discuss the Lithium battery used to power these portable electronic devices. Discuss how recharging works From your group, pick 3 mobile phones, and/or portable devices that are rechargeable. Estimate (using resources and available data), how much electricity that is used to charge them on a weekly basis From the above information, determine how much electricity is used towards powering and maintaining these devices for an average month. Estimate how much coal must be burned to produce this monthly amount of electricity Write the formula for the combustion of coal and its toxic components (namely mercury). From the coal estimated that is needed to power these devices for a month, calculate the total amount of mercury that will be produced from this reaction Discuss the link between mercury contamination of the atmosphere and portable electronic device use Discuss the impact of mercury and its toxic side effects on our environmental health (see the attached for a rubric of the requirements for this assignment)

Explanation / Answer

You will need to pick a source of coal to base your analysis on, the heat and emissions will vary considerably based on what kind of coal is being used. I recommend picking the coal produced in your area or the coal being burned by plants in your area. That will give you a heating value. From that you can use a standard "heat rate" which is the amount of heat needed per kilowatt of electricty produced. A ballpark number is 10,000 BTU/kw.

Then you may want to look at the MATS rule, or Mercury Air Toxics Standard (see link below). It will tell you how much mercury is allowed to be emitted per GW hour (gigawatt hour) of electricity production. Table 1 says coal burning units are allowed 0.003 lbs of mercury emission per GW hour. When you get the amount of power required for your phone, you can use this number to calculate the legally required maximum mercury emissions. It will be a very small number. One GH-hr can charge many phones many times.

you can refer: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2013-04-24/pdf/2013-07859.pdf

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