2 thoughts on “Timelapse video of a coal fired powerplant

  1. http://vimeo.com/8756755#comment – the comments show what you can see from the colour of the emmissions that these are nearly all steam accentuated/emphasized as a result of the very low temperatures.

    If only more Coal Fired Power Stations were as efficient as this one.

  2. Pretty much agreed. From the link, here’s the comment in full:

    I work at that Power Plant. What you see is water vapor. The plant is monitored closely for emissions by the IDNR (Iowa Deparment of Natural Resources). The new Unit #4 has the lowest emissions in the Nation for coal fired plants of items such as sulfur dioxide, NOx emissions, and even mercury. We have activated carbon to remove mercury. The stack is monitored by Continuous Emission Monitors (CEM’s).

    The largest amount of water vapor (condensing in the very cold air, can’t see any of this in the summer months) comes from our cooling tower. It will evaporate around 6000 gallons of water a minute to turn the hot steam back into water in the condenser (more in the hot summer). Coal is made of 30% moisture on average. This moisture is released into the air after combustion. The color of the emission is the important factor. It is white. Same as a cloud.

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