Natural Gas
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How is natural gas converted to electricity? What is the efficiency of the process in real life?
I need to find out the conversion factor of gallons of natural gas into kwh of electricity for a natural Gas Power plant in Louisiana. When I calculate it using heat of combustion of natural gas, it gives me a really big value for kwh of electricity, however using DOE's data gives me a far lesser value. I am confused what is the conversion factor and what is the efficiency of the process. Please be as specific as you can.
as with any combustion method of creating energy, it will have a very low efficiency, yeah the first law of thermodynamics just takes your theoretical energy yield and beats the hell out of it. depending on what process the plant is using, you will get efficiency values ranging from below 15% to mid-range 30%.