In article , JoeSpareBedroom wrote:
"Jim Yanik" wrote in message
.. .
"JoeSpareBedroom" wrote in
:

"willshak" wrote in message
...
on 9/19/2007 9:01 PM JoeSpareBedroom said the following:
"clot" wrote in message
...

This nonsense about mercury is just that!

You're an idiot.

Every fluorescent bulb and every neon tube has mercury in them. They
have been like that for decades. Let's close Times Square and Las
Vegas. Bill

I guess if we were to multiply by ten the number of bulbs being tossed
in landfills, the mercury levels around those landfills won't rise.

Right?

Compared to your average coal-fired electric generating plant,it's
trivial.
--
Jim Yanik

Uh oh. Now I need more information from you.

For every water supply affected by every landfill in America, what are the
current mercury levels, and how far are they from causing this, especially
if the intake of mercury-laden bulbs increases by factors of 2, 5 and 10?
http://www1.umn.edu/ships/ethics/minamata.htm

You have one year to complete this project. Good luck.

Worldwide mercury pollution could go down (or increase could be slowed),
from CFLs reducing need for coal fired plants. A CFL on average has about
3 milligrams of mercury.
If a 15-watter saves 45 watts over 4,000 hours, that's 180 KWH. With
average efficiency from chemical energy in fuel to your socket being
around 35% (with biggest loss in converting heat energy to mechanical
energy, 50% is extremely good), figure out how much coal has chemical
energy of 514 KWH, 1,850 megajoules.

The Wiki article says the energy density of coal is roughly 24
megajoules per kilogram. This means a 15 watt CFL, if it lasts 4,000
hours and is used where the electricity comes from coal and replaces a 60
watt incandescent, saves burning of about 77 kilograms of coal.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...5/ai_n13641513

says that mercury content in coal is mostly in a range of .07 to .24
ppm. 77 kilograms of coal accordingly have 5.4 to 18.5 mg of mercury.

http://www.epa.state.il.us/air/cair/documents/021406/
coal-washing-credit-example1.pdf

says median mercury content of "washed coal" is .06 pounds per GWh,
which is 14 milligrams for 514 KWH of chemical energy.

At that rate, if USA's electricity is more than 25% from coal, CFLs
replacing incandescents according to the above example actually reduce
mercury pollution. The Wiki article on electricity generation says that
figure is 49.7% in the US.

- Don Klipstein )