How Much Water Does A Power Station Use?

At least water is renewable. Many forms of energy need it to generate steam or cool down fuel...there's many other industries that just pollute water. From what I understand, most the worst pollutants in water sources are raw sewage and heavy metals. The clean up of Boston harbor is probably the most recent example of a turn around of the extreme. Most of their pollution was untreated raw sewage going back into the Charles river or the waterways local to the area. They endured being the laughing stock of being a coastal city in which local waterways shouldn't be toxic. Their investment in a top of the line treatment plant, also powered by alternative energy, was an example of them going from an eye sore to an example of modern development.

As for the question of how much water a 3000 MW coal station would lose...well that would depend on what kind of station they are...(there are many different standards for a station's output/ resources).

 

If you use the previous post reference of 2gal/kWh then your 3000 MW plant evaporates 144 million gal/day. However, the number for a coal plant is about 1/4 that number for 36 million gal/day. I'll leave the metric conversion to you.

 

A 3000 mw plant with natural draft cooling towers might lose to evaporation 50,000 to 75,000 gpm dependent on outside temp and humidity. The balance of the water would be water that is recirculated.

The calc above on daily use is about right. My numbers would yield 108 million gallons per day. of evaporation with a natural draft cooling tower.

If it did not have a cooling tower all the cooling water (likely more that 1,000,000 gpm) would be raised in temperature and then recirculated to the body of water and evaporation would continue from the body of water via normal means.

 

From the new proposed and hopefully canceled plant here 1,200 MW coal powered plant, needing to contract 25,400 acre-feet of Colorado River water, or about 8.3 billion gallons per year. Which works out to 21 Billion gallons a year or 57 million gallons or 215 million liters a day for a 3000MW plant. This is for a new plant, and I'm sure the old ones are more wasteful with water, but it is also for texas which is hotter.

 

now honestly, would you rather shower or eat a great hamburger? :rockon:

 

The water I shower with is treated and put back. The water for my beef comes from other sources. I would rather use less water growing corn though. That process is pretty simple, lower the ethanol mandate to where the epa thinks we need it for oxygenation, remove the blending subsidy, sugar tarrif, and ethanol tarrif. That would not only save a great deal of taxpayer money it would save a great deal of water too

Let's put up more wind turbines and more PV solar too, that uses less water for electricity.

 

I'd rather NOT use my stomach for a graveyard, shower or no shower.

 

The real problem is factory farming, which is very inefficient despite their claims. Watch Food, Inc or a similar movie to understand it better.

That said, it is not necessary to give up meat altogether. A "flexitarian" diet works almost as well.

 

Water plays a number of roles in energy production, including pumping crude oil out of the ground, helping to remove pollutants from power plant exhaust, generating steam that turns turbines, flushing away residue after fossil fuels are burned, and keeping power plants cool.A water keeping a single 60-watt lightbulb lit for 12 hours uses as much as 60 liters of water? According to researchers at the Virginia Water Resources Research Center, in Blacksburg, Va., fossil-fuel-fired thermoelectric power plants consume more than 500 billion L of fresh water per day in the United States alone.”That translates to an average of 95 L of water to produce 1 kilowatt-hour of electricity,”

 

I would point out the sun evaporates a lot of water in providing energy for plants and other life. So we should compare the water use of the earthbound power plant to the water use of the solar power plant.

 

There's a big difference between evaporating water, which is a distillation process that leads to rain that will replenish the supply of fresh water, vs. industrial processes which pollute water, taking fresh water and making it useless and eventually polluting rivers, lakes, and the ocean.

Evaporation is not necessarily a bad thing, and when the sun evaporates ocean water, that's a very good thing. Pollution is always a bad thing. Power plants pollute a lot of water, as does the extraction and refining of fossil fuel

 

Depends on the type of power plant. I'm not ready to state that thermal solar suffers from all of those problems, but it does need cooling.

 

I don't usually read those discussions so maybe this was address but in case it wasn't; refineries use a lot of water too as a cooling medium. It's still the most efficient/cheapest method for industrial processing.

 

No environmental problem with steam as fas as I know. But I think GrumpyCabbie was touching on the issue of fresh water supply conflict between drinking water and industry. Another issue is if the returned water is hotter you impact eco-system (nuke plants) or if the river is being depleted you have premature end-of-river flow (Colorado R?) or in some cases salt water intrusion line moving up the river to impact drinking water supplies (Delaware R).