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Comment by msgodel | Hacker News Reader

I live somewhere that's never had a smog problem so I'm not super familiar with it but do gas turbines actually generate smog? I feel like of all the classes of heat engines they'd produce the fewest particulates. Is this actually a problem out there in the West?

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Burning of methane (natural gas) produces oxides of nitrogen (NOx) (several types), which are a major driver of smog. See, as a starting point,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOx

While natural gas is cleaner than coal in some obvious ways (i.e., no particulate solids), it has a specific problem with NOx, because of the super high temperatures inside internal-combustion gas turbines. The upside is higher thermodynamic efficiency (highest of any thermal source); the downside is, this.

Methane has no Nitrogen in it. All of that would have to come from the air. It's famously very very hard to react Nitrogen that way, I'd be surprised if gas turbines produced it in noticeable quantities.

EDIT: didn't see your edit until now. Heh it shouldn't be too hard to scrub out if it were really a problem. That seems like a better way to handle it than this weird exemption process that seems to be in place now.

All diesels produce enough of NOx that catalytic reduction is needed.

Diesel has a lot of impurities. Methane is just one molecule.

If it were so easy just better refine the fuel why would Europeans bother to add these converters and adblue injectors? No it's not impurities, but high pressure/temperature combustion. The higher the more efficient and more NOx comes out.

Europe does all kinds of things, basing your understanding of chemistry around what a state does rather than the other way around is literally insane.

However, it's not insane to look at what experts put in place and consider that there are reasons why they have done that. Yes, experts can be wrong or are forced to make sub-optimal decisions, but it's worth examining their thinking behind the decisions.

It is always science -> experts. NOT the other way around.

In theory, yes. In practise, the experts will also consider real-world constraints (e.g. cost, planning, staffing etc). Also, taking the advice/opinion of respected experts (i.e. not YouTube experts) is a short-cut to spending years studying the science (that they had to do) yourself and that's even assuming that you can reach the same level of competency as them.

There are multiple NOx sources during combustion.

Fuel NOx is only one of them, which you quite rightly point out is not dominant in methane combustion due to the rarity of nitrogen in the fuel.

The dominant source in methane combustion is thermal NOx, which forms due to the extreme temperature of the combustion, causing atmospheric nitrogen to decompose and react with atmospheric oxygen.

Source: https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2020-09/documents/1....

It's impurities in oxidizer. 80% of air is N2, 20% O2. N2 + O2 -> NOx minus some kJ(endothermic). Means, run plain air through anything hot and NOx comes out. Doesn't matter how pure the fuel, doesn't have to be an ICE, doesn't need fuel at all. Hot stuff in the air = NOx.

> "Heh it shouldn't be too hard to scrub out if it were really a problem."

The entire point of this dispute is that xAI could install scrubbers for these emissions, but chooses not too. The Ars Technica article discusses this at great length.

Oh I didn't realize that. Yeah they need to follow the law or build the thing somewhere else.

Surprised? Gas turbines do produce large amounts of NOx, it’s been a huge effort over decades to bring it down in both aviation and stationary plants… (e.g. https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-01/documents/05... )

It is not a problem if the plant respects regulation and industry standards... which in this particular case doesn’t seem to be a priority.

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