why is carbon monoxide used to reduce zinc oxide to zinc in the zinc extraction process and not carbon directly?

The chemical reaction involving the reduction of ZnO by CO is not feasible thermodynamically: This is because the standard free energy of formation ( ) of CO2 from CO is higher than that of the formation of ZnO from Zn. Thus, CO cannot be used to reduce ZnO to Zn.

it is important to conserve water because there is very limited amount of freshwater here on earth and if we are not smart about how we use it we will only be runnning out of our supply faster than neccessarry.