boiling water - an aside

I have a confession to make. It's a bit embarrassing.

During my recent online research on the fraught topic of 'gas stovetop kettle versus electric kettle', I was horrified I tell you to realise that I was ignorant (although, I suspect I once knew but had forgotten - you know how old stuff sometimes gets pushed out by incoming new stuff?) of the fact that for the most part (in the world, and in Australia), we create electricity for domestic and commercial supply thusly: we MINE COAL so we can BURN IT so we can BOIL WATER to CREATE STEAM which we then use to ROTATE TURBINES. I think in my mind I had it that the coal is used somehow more DIRECTLY. Nothing so straightforward (one is almost tempted to use the term 'crude') as using it as fuel TO BOIL WATER (apologies for all the caps - you will perhaps better understand my consternation after the next paragraph). Now, I am a huge advocate of old technology not necessarily being bad technology - it's just that clearly in this case we all agree that Victorian-era technology (see plagiarised, paraphrased and generally bastardised Wikipedia entry, below) is still perfectly good technology (yes, I am being deliberately provocative). At least where electricity generation is concerned.

This is kind of ironic to me for the following reason. Health Departments around the developed world issue 'boil water' notices to the public on the relatively rare occasions there is, for whatever reason, a microbiological risk to health from drinking water supply (usually due to some sort of treatment failure - or even just suspected failure - at a water treatment plant). When long ago I worked at a water utility (which shall remain nameless and locale-less), I once asked, why doesn't the utility itself just BOIL THE WATER before distribution, rather than use all that other fandangled, complicated (and hence prone to breakdowns and breakthroughs) technology (setting aside for the moment that microbiological risk is hardly the only water quality issue for provision of safe drinking water... but it is why disinfectants such as chlorine and chloramine are added to the water, which NB also protects against post-treatment recontamination, e.g. via dodgy pipework, etc.)? At the time I was guffawed at and told it would involve FAR TOO MUCH ENERGY to boil THAT MUCH WATER (setting aside for the moment how much energy is involved in CREATING FRESHWATER FROM SEAWATER. I suspect that if I was a Christian I would totally be saying that desalination is 'against nature and god' or something - frankly, I'm surprised all the good Christians aren't more in uproar over it. One can only guess at why they're not... sorry, I digress).

Now, I do not pretend to be an engineer (and I hasten to add that some of my best friends are engineers... and/or Christians), or indeed any kind of expert in electricity generation or even drinking water treatment, and I am sure there are many, many valid objections to this 'coupling' that admittedly only just occurred to me (and that has no doubt occurred to many others in the past, and perhaps been dismissed each and every time out-of-hand)... and I would welcome hearing about them (at least, those I haven't already mentioned in passing). Perhaps it would be too hard to stop the by-products of combustion from contaminating the water? But even as a lay-person, I'd still be interested in seeing some overlays of local coal-or-other-fired-power-plants with otherwise reasonably 'fit-for-purpose' water sources (though there probably aren't too many of the latter category where I live that aren't already being exploited for some purpose or other...)

I also realise that retrofitting technology - particularly where disparate locations are involved - is difficult and expensive and that hindsight is a fine thing. Really, I think I am mainly just mad that I allowed myself be GUFFAWED AT by COMPLETE AND UNIMAGINATIVE MORONS, but also I am irked by how ironic it seems that in this whiz-bang, modern era we BOIL WATER OVER AND OVER AGAIN for one type of 'utility' generation at one site, but don't somehow harness that capacity to help generate (microbiologically) safe drinking water, either at the same site, or for subsequent distribution.

REFERENCE

Adapted [I think that's the correct term] from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_generation), accessed 15/04/2011:

Almost all commercial electrical generation is done using electromagnetic induction, in which mechanical energy forces an electrical generator to rotate. There are many different methods of developing the mechanical energy, including heat engines, hydro, wind and tidal power.

Even with nuclear power, the direct conversion of nuclear energy to electricity by beta decay is used only on a small scale. In a full-size nuclear power plant, it is the heat from the nuclear reactions that is used to run a heat engine. This drives a generator, which converts mechanical energy into electricity by magnetic induction.

Most electric generation is driven by heat engines. The combustion of fossil fuels supplies most of the heat to these engines, with a significant fraction from nuclear fission and some from renewable sources. The modern steam turbine invented by Sir Charles Parsons in 1884 today generates about 80 percent of the electric power in the world using a variety of heat sources.