4 ms·

So according to google a 747 can through 36,000 gallons of fuel in a 10 hour trip. Being conservative and you only need half as much for 2 engines at full throt

by ascotan 10y ago

So according to google a 747 can through 36,000 gallons of fuel in a 10 hour trip. Being conservative and you only need half as much for 2 engines at full throttle, that means that you would need ~40K gallons of fuel a day? Google tells me that jet fuel ranges from $4-$8 a gallon, therefore the operating costs for a single truck is around a quarter million dollars a day ($250,000)? Even if the operating cost is only 1/5 of this ($50,000 a day), that's 20 million dollars a year in fuel costs. If India has 20 million a year to spend on fuel for this contraption, why wouldn't they just spend that money to clean up the power plants instead? My guess is that the operating costs of this terrible idea are so large, they would hardly ever turn it on. I agree that this seems like a PR stunt rather than a real idea.

photogrammetry 10y ago
It is colossally stupid to do this jet engine experiment rather than spend their $20 million on, say, preventing the city's poor from burning trash. But why address the root cause of a problem when you can treat the symptom in an extremely stupid, expensive, and temporary way?
- Declanomous 10y ago
  20 million dollars does not go a long way as far as civic infrastructure goes. Someone farther up pointed out that this is equates to $2 per person per year. Someone else pointed out that the fuel cost of jet engines is around a quarter of what the parent comment estimated. So, all in all, I'd say it's a somewhat reasonable approach.
  - photogrammetry 10y ago
    They could bribe those poor people with $2 a year not to burn trash.
selectodude 10y ago
Jet fuel in 747 quantities at an airport is about $1.75/gal.
tn13 10y ago
If $20M per year can actually clean up Delhi's air that would be a great solution. That is if that works. Central Delhi's population is 10M and this is $2 per year per head. I am pretty sure people are spending lot more than that to protect themselves from harm coming from pollution. > If India has 20 million a year to spend on fuel for this contraption, why wouldn't they just spend that money to clean up the power plants instead? Shows gross ignorance about Delhi and India. Delhi's pollution is not caused by power plants. This is not California you are talking about. Powerplant do not contribute much to Delhi's pollution. The real problem with Delhi is that it is land-locked city surrounded by even more polluting industries. Delhi administration has 0 control over what happens in the 4 neighboring states. People around Delhi are burning wood and cow-dung to cook food. There are thousands of brick kilns that produce worst kind of soot. Farmers in Punjab regularly burn husk. Unlike Mumbai Delhi has no oceanside to replace city's polluted air with relatively cleaner air. For example In Delhi fine particle pollution rates are ten times higher than that of Chennai, which has ten times more cars but is coastally located, without the surrounding industrial areas.
- tempestn 10y ago
  He's only talking about one of these units though. They would need more than that to completely clean up the city's air, assuming it works.
usefulcat 10y ago
They might not need to do this all the time. Maybe only when a temperature inversion is having an adverse affect on air quality.
rz2k 10y ago
Believe it or not, retrofitting a single large coal-fired power plant can cost more than a billion dollars.
- abakker 10y ago
  Does that mean retrofitting is more expensive than just building a net new solar plant of the same capacity?
  - nbarbettini 10y ago
    In some cases, I believe so. But a solar plant is only useful for half the day (at best).
  - rz2k 10y ago
    I'm not in the power industry, but you can read more about the economics of retrofits here[1], and technologies here[2]. I'd imagine the cost of retrofitting depends on how much pollution needs to be mitigated to make the (pollution*dollars)/power figure acceptable. This industry source[3] seems to have about as many stories about stations being decommissioned as it does about large retrofit projects, which says that in the US the cost assigned to the pollution often is more expensive than moving to another source. Like a lot of environmental issues, I think concerns about emissions tend to be treated as though they are decadent compared to immediate economic impact, until a crisis is underway. That is, people notice their power bill, brownouts or their factory shutting down from a shortage of electricity, but they may not directly attribute their children's asthma or getting cancer a decade later to the power plant. Furthermore people can bemoan the waste of shuttering a functional power plant if the harm the decommissioning averted is not tangible to them. Crisis-level smog days can help justify policies that take action, as well as create an appreciation for the importance of air quality in general. These jet engines sound like the equivalent of building a taller smokestack. They're probably a cheap way to lessen some of the health effects during a smog crisis, but not any sort of long term solution. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/us-coal-fired-power-plants-update-close/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/us-coal-fired-pow... [2] http://nma.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Fact-Sheet-Clean-Coal-Technology.pdf http://nma.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Fact-Sheet-Clean-C... [3] http://www.power-eng.com/coal/coal-retrofits-upgrades.html http://www.power-eng.com/coal/coal-retrofits-upgrades.html

by ascotan 10y ago

photogrammetry 10y ago

It is colossally stupid to do this jet engine experiment rather than spend their $20 million on, say, preventing the city's poor from burning trash. But why address the root cause of a problem when you can treat the symptom in an extremely stupid, expensive, and temporary way?

Declanomous 10y ago
20 million dollars does not go a long way as far as civic infrastructure goes. Someone farther up pointed out that this is equates to $2 per person per year. Someone else pointed out that the fuel cost of jet engines is around a quarter of what the parent comment estimated. So, all in all, I'd say it's a somewhat reasonable approach.
- photogrammetry 10y ago
  They could bribe those poor people with $2 a year not to burn trash.

selectodude 10y ago

Jet fuel in 747 quantities at an airport is about $1.75/gal.

tn13 10y ago

If $20M per year can actually clean up Delhi's air that would be a great solution. That is if that works. Central Delhi's population is 10M and this is $2 per year per head. I am pretty sure people are spending lot more than that to protect themselves from harm coming from pollution. > If India has 20 million a year to spend on fuel for this contraption, why wouldn't they just spend that money to clean up the power plants instead? Shows gross ignorance about Delhi and India. Delhi's pollution is not caused by power plants. This is not California you are talking about. Powerplant do not contribute much to Delhi's pollution. The real problem with Delhi is that it is land-locked city surrounded by even more polluting industries. Delhi administration has 0 control over what happens in the 4 neighboring states. People around Delhi are burning wood and cow-dung to cook food. There are thousands of brick kilns that produce worst kind of soot. Farmers in Punjab regularly burn husk. Unlike Mumbai Delhi has no oceanside to replace city's polluted air with relatively cleaner air. For example In Delhi fine particle pollution rates are ten times higher than that of Chennai, which has ten times more cars but is coastally located, without the surrounding industrial areas.

tempestn 10y ago
He's only talking about one of these units though. They would need more than that to completely clean up the city's air, assuming it works.

usefulcat 10y ago

They might not need to do this all the time. Maybe only when a temperature inversion is having an adverse affect on air quality.

rz2k 10y ago

Believe it or not, retrofitting a single large coal-fired power plant can cost more than a billion dollars.

abakker 10y ago
Does that mean retrofitting is more expensive than just building a net new solar plant of the same capacity?
- nbarbettini 10y ago
  In some cases, I believe so. But a solar plant is only useful for half the day (at best).
- rz2k 10y ago
  I'm not in the power industry, but you can read more about the economics of retrofits here[1], and technologies here[2]. I'd imagine the cost of retrofitting depends on how much pollution needs to be mitigated to make the (pollution*dollars)/power figure acceptable. This industry source[3] seems to have about as many stories about stations being decommissioned as it does about large retrofit projects, which says that in the US the cost assigned to the pollution often is more expensive than moving to another source. Like a lot of environmental issues, I think concerns about emissions tend to be treated as though they are decadent compared to immediate economic impact, until a crisis is underway. That is, people notice their power bill, brownouts or their factory shutting down from a shortage of electricity, but they may not directly attribute their children's asthma or getting cancer a decade later to the power plant. Furthermore people can bemoan the waste of shuttering a functional power plant if the harm the decommissioning averted is not tangible to them. Crisis-level smog days can help justify policies that take action, as well as create an appreciation for the importance of air quality in general. These jet engines sound like the equivalent of building a taller smokestack. They're probably a cheap way to lessen some of the health effects during a smog crisis, but not any sort of long term solution. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/us-coal-fired-power-plants-update-close/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/us-coal-fired-pow... [2] http://nma.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Fact-Sheet-Clean-Coal-Technology.pdf http://nma.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Fact-Sheet-Clean-C... [3] http://www.power-eng.com/coal/coal-retrofits-upgrades.html http://www.power-eng.com/coal/coal-retrofits-upgrades.html