Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Nonrenewable Energy (Fossil Fuels (Oil (Second most widely used energy…
Nonrenewable Energy
Fossil Fuels
It is the product of ancient plant and animal remains buried millions of years ago and subjected to intense heat and pressure.
Some go towards making electricity, some are used more directly(for creating steel, oil in power vehicles), and in all cases, energy is released from them through combustion, and converted into other forms.
Net Energy: amount of high quality energy available from a given quantity of an energy resource, minus the high quality energy needed to make the energy available.
Energy density: amount of energy available per kilogram of the resource. Compressed hydrogen gas and uranium-235 have the highest energy densities.
Oil
Second most widely used energy resource in the world. It is used to transport people & goods, heat homes, grow food, and make other energy resources available.
Formation: Crude oil, petroleum, conventional oil, contains a mixture of combustible hydrocarbons along with small amounts of sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen impurities.
-
Refining the oil: Oil is heated in pressurized vessels to separate it into various fuels and other components.
Proven oil reserves: known deposits from which oil can be extracted profitably at current prices using current technology.
-
Disadvantages: low net energy, costly to produce, large quantities of air pollutants, 20% more CO2, strip-mining, waste water from fracking.
Hydrofracking
Hydraulic Fracturing are high pressure pumps that force a mixture of water, sand and cocktail of chemicals through holes in the well pipe to fracture the shale rock and create cracks.
Problems: Huge energy input, large amounts of water, and wastewater.
Slurry water can go: underground wells, sewage treatment plants, open air holding ponds, cleaned up and reused.
Natural Gas
Mixture of gases like methane, propane, butane and hydrogen sulfide.
Advantages: chepaer to extract, less expensive and take much less time to build, burns cleaner than oil and much cleaner than coal.
Disadvantages: Slow the shift to reliance on renewable, clean energy resources, leaks large quantities of methane into the atmosphere, huge inputs of energy, risk of groundwater pollution.
Coal
Solid fossil fuel formed from remains of land plants that are buried for years and exposed to intense heat and pressure.
It is burned to produce electricity and used to produce the intense heat required for steel and cement production.
Disadvantages: largest emitters of CO2, severely degrades land, black carbon particulates, air pollutants, causes various severe illnesses.
Nuclear Sources
-
Nuclear Fuel Cycle: 1. build a nuclear power plant. 2. mine the uranium. 3. process and enrich the uranium to make fuel. 4. use it in a reactor. 5. store radioactive wastes for thousands of years. 6. retiring worn out plant.
Advantages: Low CO2 Emissions, no toxic emissions, low environmental impact and low risk of an accident.
Disadvantages: high cost, low net energy, nuclear weapons, nuclear waste.
-