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115 comments on DrumBeat: November 18, 2006

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Laurence Aurbach on November 18, 2006 - 3:48pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Sheesh, that was some correction. I'll try again.

... BLM sales that puts the coal/land ratio in Wyoming around 110,000 tons/acre. If your 30,000 tons/acre is true for 58% of the U.S., and 110,000 tons/acre is true for 42% of the U.S., then the national average might be around 64,000 tons/acre.

Note, however, that the Kentucky Geological Survey says that bituminous coal will yield 1,800 tons/acre foot. At a five foot coalbed thickness, that's 9000 tons/acre. Quite a range of estimates! I'm hoping someone with expertise in this field can weigh in.

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Substrate on November 19, 2006 - 12:20am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
A can of worms has definitely been opened.  This interests me for sure.  Only time will tell if it can battle my Americanized gnat-like attention span though.  I too hope someone with expertise will weigh in (aka TOD faeries).  But hope can be helped by giving it a chance, so I'll attempt to keep the motivation up, distill what's been learned today and expound a little, and probably drop it into Monday's drumbeat in the hopes of catching a wider audience.  With luck there'll be someone there with some insight.
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Substrate on November 19, 2006 - 10:25am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Electricity - production: 3,892,000,000,000,000 Wh (2003)   https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/us.html

Coal is ~50% of the mix.  So 1,946,000,000,000,000 Wh attributed to Coal.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/coal/page/acr/table4.html
68% of mines appear to be "surface" mines, so 1,323,280,000,000,000 Wh attributable to surface mined coal.

If a 1,400 MW (continuous duty plant) consumes roughly 13,200 tons of coal per day, which is (33,600 mWh/13,200 tons) or (2.54 mWh/ton).

(1,323,280,000,000,000 Wh) X (tons/2,540,000 Wh) = 520,976,378 tons of coal per year for "surface mined" coal.

Which best case 110,000 tons/acre: (520,976,378tons)X(acre/110,000tons)= 4,736 acres/year

Worst case 3,000 tons/acre (18" seam): (520,976,378tons)X(acre/3,000tons)= 173,659 acres/year

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Substrate on November 19, 2006 - 10:46am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Vermont is 9,250 miles^2 or 5,920,000 acres.

Best case it would take 1,250 years to destroy a Vermont

Worst case it would take 34 years to destroy a Vermont

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115 comments on DrumBeat: November 18, 2006

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