In 1986 an electrical power plant in Taylorsville, Georgia, burned 8,376,726 tons of coal, a national record at that time. (a) Assuming that the coal was 83% carbon and 2.5% sulfur and that combustion was complete, calculate the number of tons of carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide pro- duced by the plant during the year.

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Accepted Answer

Hey everyone, we're told that a sample of coal contains 78% carbon and 18% nitrogen, How many tons of carbon dioxide and nitrogen dioxide will be produced? If 3,000,039 934 tons of coal were completely burned first. Let's go ahead and calculate our tons of carbon dioxide. Taking our 3,039, tons of coal. We're going to multiply this by 78 tons of carbon over 100 tons of coal, which is coming from our 78% listed right here. Next, we know that we have 12.01 tons of carbon per 44.01 tons of carbon dioxide. And this is coming from the molar mass of each. So when we calculate this out and cancel out our units, we end up with a total of 8.7 times 10 to the six ton of carbon dioxide. Now, let's go ahead and calculate our ton of nitrogen dioxide. Again, we want to start with our 3,039, tons of coal And we want to use our 18% of nitrogen. So we're going to multiply it by 18 ton of nitrogen, divided by 100 tons of coal. Next relating our nitrogen to our nitrogen dioxide, we know that we have 14.01 ton of nitrogen Per 46.01 ton of nitrogen dioxide. When we calculate this out and cancel out our units, we end up with a total of 1.8 times 10 to the six ton of nitrogen dioxide. And this is going to be our final answers. So I hope this made sense and let us know if you have any questions.

Verified Solution

Key Concepts

Combustion Reaction

Stoichiometry

Molar Mass