berretta, your original post was rather disingenuous, quoting a boiler efficiency of 96%. Who cares about boiler efficiency? It is the overall efficiency that counts. And the overall efficiency of a coal powered, steam turbine power station is about 33%.
Your article quotes:
"First, coal-fired power stations do NOT send 60 to 70% of the energy up the chimney. The boilers of modern power stations are 96% efficient, and the exhaust heat is captured by the economisers and reheaters and heat the air and water before entering the boilers.
The 4% lost is heat through boiler wall convection.
Coal-fired Power Stations are highly efficient with very little heat loss and can generate massive amount of energy for our needs. They can generate power at an efficiency of less than 10,000 BTU energy ( = 10.55 MJ) per kilowatt (kWh?) ( 1 kWh = 3.6 MJ) and cost-wise that is very low."
That first line is a lie. 60% to 70% DOES go "up the chimney". The stupidity of that lie is emphasised by the last sentence in that quote. Work it out - they use 10.55MJ to generate 3.6MJ - that is an efficiency of 34.12%, with 65.88% energy loss - mostly as heat.
