CO2 Balloon

[seekermeister]

Considering the energy usage figures on PowerChute, I'm wondering how big of a ballon would be required to hold 1lb of CO2? It gives examples of the number of trees that it feeds, and the number of miles that would have to be driven to produce a specific amount of this gas, but that isn't as easy to comprehend as something more graphic...like my balloon.

 

[mickey megabyte]

i'm sure avogadro's number would come into the equation somewhere...

 

[seekermeister]

I have no idea of what avogadro's number means...I'll have to Google it. I did find that 1lb CO2 = 8.731 scf, and that works out to requiring a balloon of 2.5556 feet diameter to contain it, but the reference that I used said that was for quantity, rather than volume. I'm not sure what difference that would make though.

EDIT: Since PowerChute says that the it produces 6.97lbs of CO2 to create the energy to run my desktop for 1 day, that would mean that each day I'm blowing a balloon 13.94 feet in diameter, which sustains ~ 2.5 trees. I guess that we need a bigger rain forest.

EDIT: Maybe the solution is to have all of those ranchers in South America, that are cutting down the rain forest, to become electrical producers instead. The only problem with that is being able to conduct all of those amps back to the USA.

 

[mickey megabyte]

it all depends on the pressure, volume and temperature, if i remember my high school physics.

not that straight-forward...:huh:

 

[seekermeister]

On second thought, I doubt that I am blowing such a big balloon, because the majority of electricity in my area is hydro-electric. I know that there are a couple nuclear power plants around, but I don't know that they produce CO2 or not.

 

[mickey megabyte]

they don't as far as i know...just magic moonbeams

(joke from old british tv show, two ronnies - not on youtube unfortunately )

 

[seekermeister]

Then PowerChute is somewhat biased, because I don't believe that there is a coal fired power plant in my state. Maybe they need to add a magic moonbeam meter.

EDIT: I was wrong, there must be some hiding around somewhere:

Oklahoma had 15 coal-fired generating stations in 2005, with 5,720 MW of capacity - representing 26.6% of the state's total electric generating capacity, and making Oklahoma the 20th biggest coal energy producing state in the U.S.[3] In 2006, Oklahoma's coal-fired power plants produced 36.1 million tons of CO2, 104,000 tons of sulfur dioxide, and 61,000 tons of nitrogen oxide; coal-fired power plants were responsible for 35.0% of the state's total CO2 emissions.[4] In 2005, Oklahoma emitted 29.1 tons of CO2 per person, almost 50% higher than the U.S. average.[5]

Still it brings to question the validity of PowerChute's figures, since electrical production isn't uniform.