In 1986 an electrical power plant in Taylorsville, Georgia, burned 8,376,726 tons of coal, a national record at that time. (a) Assuming that the coal was 83% carbon and 2.5% sulfur and that combustion was complete, calculate the number of tons of carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide produced by the plant during the year.

In 1986 an electrical power plant in Taylorsville, Georgia, burned 8,376,726 tons of coal, a national record at that time. (b) If 55% of the SO₂ could be removed by reaction with powdered CaO to form CaSO₃, how many tons of CaSO₃ would be produced?

(b) Concentrations of lead in the bloodstream are often quoted in units of μg/dL. Averaged over the entire country, the mean concentration of lead in the blood was measured to be 1.6 μg/dL in 2008. Express this concentration in ppb.

The water supply for a midwestern city contains the following impurities: coarse sand, finely divided particulates, nitrate ions, trihalomethanes, dissolved phosphorus in the form of phosphates, potentially harmful bacterial strains, dissolved organic substances. Which of the following processes or agents, if any, is effective in removing each of these impurities: coarse sand filtration, activated carbon filtration, aeration, ozonization, precipitation with aluminum hydroxide?

The estimated average concentration of NO₂ in air in the United States in 2006 was 0.016 ppm. (a) Calculate the partial pressure of the NO₂ in a sample of this air when the atmospheric pressure is 755 torr (99.1 kPa).

An impurity in water has an extinction coefficient of 3.45⨉10³ M^-1 cm^-1 at 280 nm, its absorption maximum (A Closer Look, p. 576). Below 50 ppb, the impurity is not a problem for human health. Given that most spectrometers cannot detect absorbances less than 0.0001 with good reliability, is measuring the absorbance of a water sample at 280 nm a good way to detect concentrations of the impurity above the 50-ppb threshold?