Category Archives: Environment

The Power Cost To Bake A Bread Machine Loaf of Bread

Climate, Energy, Environment, Global, Kitchen, ,

DSC00770 Bread machine with maximum power draw of 430 Watts.   The average program time, which includes mixing and rising time, before baking,  is 3 1/4 hours.  If during this amount of time the maximum power usage such as that required to  bake at the highest temperature for the entire 3 1/4 hours, the power used would be about 1,400 watts used for the whole time.  This is 1.4 kilowatt-hours.   It would cost  us what a Kilowatt- hour costs on our electricity bill.

But, the machine does not always draw that much power, since much of the time the machine is kneading , and incubating the loaf-in-progress at a merely warm temperature for getting the yeast to grow, so really the number of kilowatt hours used is probably less than 1 kilowatt-hour, which may cost around $0.10.  Therefore,  the electricity alone costs much less than two pounds of ready made bread.  

There is the equivalent of 33.4 Kilowatt-hours in one gallon of gas.  So the equivalent amount of gasoline to power the bread machine for three hours is roughly  1 kilowatt hour  divided by 33.4 kilowatt hours, or 3% of a gallon, or the equivalent of driving a little less than a mile.

Here is another way to look at  the CO2 production of a person  The average person puts about 2 lbs of CO2 into the air in a day.   This is 1/10 th the amount of CO2 produced by using one gallon of gas.  

A person uses about the energy of a 100 watt light bulb, which is about 2.4 Kilowatt hours per day.  This 2.4 kilowatt hours divided by 33.4 kilowatt hours per gallon of gas is equivalent to about 1.4 pounds of CO2 per day.  Close enough to the above estimate of 2 pounds CO2 per day mentioned above.

Anyway, a bread machine contributes less CO2 to the air per loaf than a person contributes in a day.

 

 

 

 

Carbon Dioxide from Methane

Climate, Education, Environment, Global, , , , ,

DSC00729A model of a methane molecule and two oxygen molecules, the reactants  when we burn methane (natural gas) in air.  The methane molecules is made of one carbon atom (black)  and four hydrogen atoms (white).   Methane is  a  hydrocarbo.  It is also a fossil fuel.  The element oxygen occurs in the atmosphere as two oxygen atoms (red) combined into a molecule.   When the methane burns, the above reactants become rearranged into the products below, with the release of energy.

DSC00728 These are the products formed, carbon dioxide and water,  when methane burns in oxygen.  The leftmost molecule is carbon dioxide, made up of one carbon atom (black)  and two oxygen atoms (red).  Each of the two water molecules is made up of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom.  Carbon dioxide is the greenhouse gas which is put into the atmosphere when methane, or any fossil fuel is burned.  This is  the source of our global warming.

 

 

Recycling Day, A Trip to the Recycling Center

Environment

DSC00665 Loaded up with

recyclablesDSC00666

After wanting to recycle for many years,  (I would even like to recycle the ink on the paper) we are finally recycling, and have found it to be quite convenient.  We just load up our vehicle with the paper, cardboard, plastic, metal, and glass which we have been collecting, largely separating as we go, and drive it to the user-friendly recycling center, where they help us unload, continuing to sort into their  categories .

It eases my mind that as we go along, I do not feel so guilty about getting rid of the packaging and plastic that comes along with our purchases, or disposing of broken items like old phones and radios that no longer work.   I am not really discarding them.  I am sending them for recycling.

The earth has yielded these items all to us, the plastics from fossil fuels, the metals from ores, the glass from common sand, but with the input of energy, cardboard and paper from trees, and other living materials, grown, transported, and processed with considerable environmental costs, so we are good to the earth when we recycle.  Furthermore, we are good to ourselves, not only in having a better conscience, but because we will prolong the livability of our good earth.