I'm writing a paper on conservation and I'm trying to contextualize what the numbers really mean. 2.75 billion m3 of natural gas means very little to most people. What would be a good bench mark comparator so that non engineers and scientist can understand the amount of energy that really represents?
I suggest you compare this volume to overall annual use of natural gas in the US (or world). See the following link: http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=50&t=8
Alternatively, if you audience is more in tune with energy use, then convert this gas into the energy it contains and again compare to something that your audience will understand like equivalent gallons of gasoline or electricity.
Hello, you should try to help them contextualize with some comparison, with everyday thing they knew (like the average consumption of a family of 4, etc )
Agree with Sean. Depending on audience, consider also expressing it in terms of how many times it could fill something they're familiar with. For example, 'enough natural gas to fill more than 1,700 Toronto Skydomes to the roof.'
Terri,
The comments so far are very good and would definitely help people to put it into context. I would like to add another metric for you to consider: depending on the audience and context of your presentation you may want to state the quantity in terms of energy consumption. Could use the energy value of natural gas, along with the consumption for an individual household or a city to come put the quantity in context. so you might follow a track that says this much natural gas can supply enough energy to power a city the size of city x for y days. Or.. it can provide energy for M households in Shanghai, New York or Johannesburg for y months.
Tell the reader it's an amount gas that ,divided equally , would give everyone in the world, about two large suitcases full ( ~ .4 m3) containing enough energy to run a laptop for 24 hours (272 G CH4= ~ 1/2 KWH)
Take the cube root of 2.75 and take the cube root of billion . This
will produce a cube that is between 1000 meters and 1500 meters on
each of its three sides.
It would be less than a cube 1.0 mile on each side. ( 1609 meters per side )
Most of the answers have focused on demonstrating how big that number is. Another comparison which makes 2.75 billion m3 of natural gas appear somewhat small - this is equal to 4% of the energy potential of one year's worth of municipal waste generated in the United States (250M ton waste generated /year, 10M BTU/ton of waste, 36,000 BTU/m3 nat gas).
2.75 billion cubic meters of natural gas is the required amount to heat the University of Chicago's campus and Medical Center for 48 years.
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