Apple Inc New Site is not green at all, its underground self-parking could be fatal

Apple Inc New Site is not green at all, its underground self-parking could be fatal

Apple's new site in Cupertino. The red line will be the new site. Outer diameter of Apple Space Ship is over 1200 feet.

Steve Jobs visited Cupertino City Council on 6/7/2011 to discuss Apple Inc's new site. The new site looks great on a glance. Apple is moving close to a site owned by Foxconn, who is led by dictator Chairman Terry Tai-Ming Gou, sometimes written as Terry Guo, ( 郭台銘;  郭台铭). Those two companies can walk to each other's site to collaborate now.

Notwithstanding its bad acronym for Apple Space Ship, the new site is touted as green. Jobs said it will use natural gas to make electricity as the main source of power supply. The closest thing I can think of is the local company's fuel cell at Bloom Inc. I can safely say that natural gas fuel cell isn't necessarily more efficient than a coal power plant. You can also spot the solar panel in the above picture.

Another interesting part is parking will be underground. I assume that drivers have to drive to park themselves. The underground parking will need lighting 24/7. This wastes electricity. The biggest challenge is how to handle the exhaust from the tailpipes? Otherwise, lung cancers. Based on my estimation, the 9000-car underground garage will need to move 1 to 10 billion feet of air in and out of the garage per day. That is a lot of pumps and air. The closest thing I can think of is a diesel submarine which can consumes a few tons of diesel fuel a day.

For Apple's new underground garage 1 million cubic feet fresh air alone is needed to burn the gasoline per day. In a closed system, a pump can handle that 694 ft3/min airflow. There will be also carbon dioxide and other nasty exhaustion from the tailpipes. For CO2 alone, (CO2 in the air is now as high as 400 ppm v/v), on a static basis, 2.5 billion cubic feet fresh air free of CO2 is needed. I haven't even considered suspended particulates (PM 20), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and the nasty nitrogen oxides (NOs), other radical byproducts (such as HO.) produced in the gasoline combustion. Long term exposure to low level of those pollutants  has negative health effects. The worse case is lung cancer.

The next is estimation basis:

9000 cars parked underground
2 miles/hour speed in the garage
10 min drive time to drive
5 miles per gallon MPG at this low speed
600 gallon of gasoline will be burned inside the underground garage.
Stoichiometric air/fuel, weight 14.7
Air needed
14.7g/g*600gallon*6Lb/gallon*454g/Lb=24,000 kg~24 million liters~1 million ft3