Hi, around 20km away from where I live there is a coal powerplant. The “smoke” coming out of the chimney is dense and white, which suggests that it’s just steam, and for all I know steam doesn’t pollute. There is no darker smoke around the powerplant, it doesn’t even smell like it’s coal burning there. Where does all the smoke go?
In: Chemistry
The big cloud you see is steam coming from the cooling circuit in the plant. Coal power plants work by boiling water and using the resulting steam to turn a turbine, but the whole system works best if you use expensive, purified water in the boilers and then have a different stream of water that’s just pulled in from a nearby river or ocean to condense the steam coming out of the turbine back into water so you can boil it again.
Latest Answers