b) The boiler efficiency in a production unit was measured to be 75 % at the end
ID: 702105 • Letter: B
Question
b) The boiler efficiency in a production unit was measured to be 75 % at the end of 2005. The annual production of CO2 was 1700 tonnes during year 2005. This was deemed to be unsatisfactory and a number of clean technology measures were implemented during the 2005 Christmas shut-down period which improved the boiler efficiency to 87 %. The boiler maintained its efficiency over the next six years. During these six years, there were annual increases in production of 3 % per year with the same consequential annual increases in CO2 emissions from the boiler. i) Calculate the boiler CO2 emissions during each of the 6 years after 2005. [1.5 Marks] ii) Comment on your analysis from the perspective of environmental sustainability. [1.5 Marks] ii) Comment on what needs to be done to move to a truly environmentally 2 Marks sustainable paradigm for supplying heat to the production unitExplanation / Answer
(I) In this question, the language of the problem is tricky. The examiner wants to know the relative increase in CO2 production even after increasing the efficiency from 75% to 87%.
The increase in CO2 production is relative to the increase in production rate, that is 3%.
The year wise production of CO2 are as follows:
2006
CO2 production= 1700× 103/100
= 1751 tonnes
2007
CO2 production= 1751×1.03= 1803.5 tonne
2008
CO2 production= 1803.5×1.03= 1857.63 tonnes
2009
CO2 production= 1857.63×1.03= 1913.36 tonnes
2010
CO2 production= 1913.36×1.03= 1970.765 tonnes
2011
CO2 production= 1970.76×1.03= 2029.88 tonnes
(II) From the perspective of environmental sustainability, this is not a very encouraging step since there is still some increase of around 18% from the initial year of 2005 to 20011 even after increasing the boiler efficiency of cabin dioxide. Since carbon dioxide is a gas that captures infrared radiation and leads to increase in the temperature of the Earth, steps should be implemented to reduce its production.
(III) In order to shift to a more environmentally sustainable paradigm to supply heat to the production unit, we should employ methods that reduce CO2 production in the atmosphere and that can be done either by following the following two methods:
(1) Carbon Dioxide Capturing
This is a very important subject for research. Carbon Dioxide that is being generated in the production unit, should be trapped and converted to other products such as natural gas or any other chemicals such as ethylene or other carbon derivatives depending on the level of research.
(2) Use of Carbon free sources of Energy generation
Various renewable sources such as Solar, wind or nuclear energy can be used for generating energy and that energy can be used in the boilers for producing steam to run the turbines. This is also a subject of research to improve the efficiency of the semiconductor materials used in solar panels and reduce the cost of producing energy at a large scale.
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