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2 types of non-renewable energy sources
Conventional and Unconventional
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Examples of Conventional non-renewable energy sources
Petroleum, Natural Gas, Coal and Nuclear
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Examples of Unconventional non-renewable energy sources
Oil shale and natural gas hydrates in marine sediment
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Examples of renewable energy sources
Solar photovoltaics, Solar thermal power, Passive solar air and water heating, Wind, Hydropower, Biomass, Ocean energy, Geothermal, Waste to Energy
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Which continent has the biggest regional share of crude oil production?
Middle East with 30.6%
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What does OPEC stand for?
Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries
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How many countries have at least 60% of the world's crude oil reserves?
13
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Which countries has the most crude oil reserves?
Saudi Arabia 25% and Canada 15%
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What controls most of the world's oil supplies?
OPEC
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What are the possible effects of steeply rising oil prices
- Reduce energy waste
- Shift to non-carbon energy sources
- Higher prices for products made with petrochemicals
- Higher food prices; buy locally-produced food
- Higher airfares
- Smaller more fuel-efficient vehicles
- Upgrade of public transportation
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Which country uses more oil than it produces?
- United States
- It produces 9% of world's oil but imports 60%
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What major sources of energy do we use?
- 3/4 Nonrenewable fossil fuels
- The rest from nonrenewable nuclear fuel and renewable sources
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What is net energy?
The amount of high-quality usable energy available from a resource after the amount of energy needed to make it available is subtracted
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Which country consumes energy the most?
- United States
- Followed by western Europe , Japan and China
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What is renewable energy?
Resources that can be replaced or regenerated and will never run out (at least not for a very long time)
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What is nonrenewable energy?
Resources will eventually run out - once used they cannot be used again
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What are fossil fuels?
Carbon-based materials that formed over millions of years from the remains of ancient plants and animals
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Why are fossil fuels important?
- Industrial societies rely on fossil fuels as the main source of its energy
- They contain stored chemical energy, which is converted into large amounts of useful heat energy when the fuels are burned
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How do fossil fuels produce electricity?
- 1. Fuel is burned and the heat produced is used to boil water
- 2. The high-pressure, superheated steam created is used to turn the turbine
- 3. The turbine turns a generator which generates electricity
- 4. The cooling towers cool the steam which condenses as water and can be recycled in the power station
- 5. The natural gas is burnt and the hot gases produced are used directly to turn the turbine
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What are the energy changes in a coal or oil power station?
- Input energy
- Chemical
- Kinetic
- Electrical
- Heat
- Output energy
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What do we get from oil?
- Petroleum or crude oil (conventional oil)
- Fossil fuels (crude oil and natural gas)
- Oil extraction and refining (gasoline, aviation fuel, heating oil, diesel oil, asphalt)
- Petrochemicals (products of oil distillation)
- World oil consumption
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What are the advantages of oil?
Conventional oil has a high net of energy yield and relatively inexpensive
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What are the disadvantages of oil?
- Using conventional oil causes air and water pollution and releases greenhouse gases to the atmosphere
- Heavily oils from oil sand and oil shale exist in large supplies but have low net energy yields and higher environmental impacts than conventional oil has
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What waste do fossil fuels produce?
- Carbon dioxide (main waste)
- Sulfur dioxide and nitric oxides (contribute to smog and acid rain)
- Ash
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What are the advantages of conventional oil?
- Ample supply for 93 years
- Low cost
- High net energy yield
- Easily transported between countries
- Low land use
- Technology is well developed
- Efficient distribution system
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What are the disadvantages of conventional oil?
- Need to find substitutes within 50 years
- Large government subsidies
- Environmental costs
- Artificially low price encourages waste and discourages search for alternatives
- Pollutes air when produced and burned
- Releases CO2 when burned
- Water pollution
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Why does Shale oil causes more environmental problems than oil shale rock?
Because of its low yield
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What are the advantages of heavy oils from oil shale and oil sand?
- Moderate cost
- Large potential supplies
- Easily transported
- Efficient distribution system
- Technology well-developed
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What are the disadvantages of heavy oils from oil shale and oil sand?
- High cost
- Low net energy yield
- Environmental costs
- Large amount of water needed for processing
- Severe land disruption
- Severe water disruption
- Air pollution and CO2 pollution when produced and burned
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What makes natural gas useful and clean-burning fossil fuel?
- It is a mixture of gases
- More than half of is Methane
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What do we get from conventional natural gas?
- Pipelines
- Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG)
- Liquefied natural gas (LNG) - low net energy yield
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What are the advantages of conventional natural gas?
- Ample supplies
- High net energy yield
- Low cost
- Less air pollution than other fossil fuels
- Lower CO2 emissions
- Easily transported by pipeline
- Low land use
- Good fuel for fuel cells, gas turbines and motor vehicles
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What are the disadvantages of conventional natural gas?
- Nonrenewable resource
- Releases CO2 when burned
- Government subsidies
- Environmental costs
- Methane can leak from pipelines
- Difficult to transfer
- Can only shipped across ocean
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What are the advantages of coal?
- Conventional coal is very plentiful and has a high net energy yield and low cost
- Well-developed technology
- Air pollution can be reduced with improved technology
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What are the disadvantages of coal?
- Conventional coal has a very high environmental impact
- Gaseous and liquid fuels produced from coal have lower net energy yields and higher environmental impacts
- Severe land disturbance, air pollution and water pollution
- Severe threat to human health
- Large government subsidies
- High CO2 emissions
- Radioactive particle and toxic mercury emissions
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Why is coal important?
- It comes in several forms
- Burned mostly to produce electricity
- Burned in 2100 power plants, generates 40% of the world's electricity
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What are the three largest coal-burning countries?
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Environment costs of burning coal (Why is coal a dirty fuel?)
- Severe air pollution
- Sulfur released as SO2
- Large amount of soot
- CO2
- Trace amounts of mercury and radioactive materials
- Dirtiest fossil fuels to burn
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What is the slowest-growing energy source?
Nuclear Power
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Why is nuclear power expected to decline more?
- Uses a lot of money
- Poor management
- Low net yield of energy of the nuclear fuel cycle
- Safety concerns
- Need for greater government subsidies
- Concerns of transporting uranium
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What is nuclear fuel?
It is used to generate electricity but it does not burn and so it does not release any greenhouse gases
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What is nuclear fission?
Splitting of atoms and releasing huge amounts of heat energy
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What is the worst nuclear power plant accident in the world?
Chernobyl, Ukraine
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What are the advantages of nuclear fuel cycle?
- Large fuel supply
- Lowe environmental impacts
- Moderate land disruption and water pollution
- Moderate land use
- Low risk of accidents
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What are the disadvantages of nuclear fuel cycle?
- Huge government subsidies
- Low net energy yield
- High environmental impact
- Risk of catastrophic accidents
- No widely acceptable solution for long-term storage of radioactive wastes
- Subject to terrorist attacks
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What waste does nuclear power produce?
- Radioactive waste
- Uranium (separated from waste and reused)
- Plutonium (highly-radioactive product; used in the construction of nuclear bombs)
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Why is dealing with radioactive wastes difficult?
High-level radioactive wastes must be stored safely for 10,000-240,000 years
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Where to store radioactive wastes?
Deep burial (safest and cheapest)
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Solutions to nuclear waste
- Can be turned into glass
- Bury deep underground (few suitable sites)
- Dump at the bottom of the sea
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What is the power of the future?
Nuclear fusion
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What is solar energy?
Energy that comes form the sun
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How can you collect solar energy?
Through photovoltaics and heat engines
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What is photovoltaics?
It is the direct conversion of light into electricity at the atomic level
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What is photovoltaic cell?
A device that converts sunlight into direct current through photoelectric effect
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Who was the first man who noted the photoelectric effect?
Edmund Bequerel in 1839
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Who constructed the first PV cell?
Charles Fritts in 1880
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What is the first usage of PV cell?
Vanguard 1 satellite in 1958
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Why did the price of photovoltaic price declined?
Increase in oil price and increase in production of PVs
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What is wind power?
- 2% of sun energy is converted to wind energy
- Differential heating of the earth's surface and atmosphere induces vertical and horizontal air currents that are affected by the earth's rotation and contours of the land
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What is windmill?
It captures wind energy and then uses a generator to convert it to electrical energy
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What does large wind turbines do?
- Deliver electricity at lower cost than smaller turbines
- Well suited for offshore wind plants
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What does small wind turbines do?
- Local electrical grids
- Lower costs
- Landscape considerations
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How much can a wind turbine produce?
Between 1/4 to 2MW of electrical power
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What is Hydroelectric?
- Largest source of electricity from renewables
- Needs guaranteed supply of water
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What rotates turbines?
Kinetic energy
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How much electricity does hydropower plants produce?
24% of the world's electricity and 1 billion people
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How does hydropower plants work?
They harness water's energy and use simple mechanics to convert that energy into electricity
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What are the basic components of conventional hydropower plant?
- Dam
- Intake
- Turbine
- Generators
- Transformer
- Power lines
- Outflow
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What is a dam?
It holds back water, creating a large reservoir which is often used as a recreational lake
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What is the most common type of turbine?
Francis Turbine
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Examples of geothermal energy sources
- Hot water reservoirs
- Natural stem reservoirs
- Geopressured reservoirs
- Normal Geothermal gradient
- Hot dry rock
- Molten magma
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Direct uses of geothermal energy (for sources below 150 celcius)
- Space heating
- Air conditioning
- Industrial processes
- Drying
- Greenhouses
- Aquaculture
- Hot water
- Resorts and pools
- Melting snow
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Examples of direct uses
- Ground heat collectors
- Borehole heat exchange
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Generation of electricity appropriate for sources more than 150 celcius
- Dry steam plants
- Flash steam plants
- Binary cycle plants
- Hot dry rocks
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What are the geothermal's harmful effects?
- Brine can salinate soil if the water is not injected back into the reserve after the heat is extracted
- Can cause land subsidence and can lead to an increase in seismic activity
- Power plants that do not inject the cooled water back into the ground can release H2S, which is fatal when inhaled
- Noise pollution from drilling of wells
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What are the advantages of geothermal?
- Useful minerals can be extracted
- Will create more jobs
- Can be online 100% of the time
- Less C02 emissions
- Do not require a lot of land
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Where can we find geothermal energy?
Regions near volcanoes, hot springs and fumaroles
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Which is the most successful country in using geothermal energy?
Iceland
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What is the first commercial wood-burning plant?
ARBRE
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