G'day Norm,
Glad to see that the Super 24 will have another life.
The smoke down this way is all from Dept of Changing Names fuel reduction burns, up in the hills to the north. With the late hot weather through March, they've only just been able to get these rolling, so they're going a bit flat out.
The visible stack plumes from the power stations here are essentially condensing water vapour - there aren't normally any 'smoke' particles from incomplete combustion, or significant amounts of ash particles - those are nearly all dropped out in the electrostatic precipitators, before the flue gas gets to the bottom of the stack.
So what exits the stack is water vapour + 'permanent gases' - mostly N
2 and CO
2, with a little NO
x and a trace of SO
2.
The only time that actual 'smoke' occurs is when a station has to fire up a boiler from cold, after maintenance shuts etc. So they make very sure they do that in the dark of night - there's no such thing as black smoke on a dark night, y'know.
