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TME 738:ENERGY RESOURCES
Fossil, Nuclear, Renewable and New sources
Module I
COURSE CONTENTS
Energy resources (fossil, nuclear, renewable and new sources)- qualitative and quantitative assessment.
National, regional and world fossil fuel resources overview.
Energy substitution and relevant factors
Energy supply and demand projections for local, regional, international applications.
Energy resources- fossil
Fossil fuels: Coal, oil and gas are called "fossil fuels" because they have been formed from the organic remains of prehistoric plants and animals.
Fossil fuels provided around 66% of the world's electrical power, and 95% of the world's total energy demands (including heating, transport, electricity generation and other uses).
How it works:
Coal is crushed to a fine dust and burnt.
Oil and gas can be burnt directly.
The main bit to remember:
Burn  Heat water Steam turns Turbine turns
fuel to make steam Turbine generator
Electrical
power
Fossil fuel power station - how it works
The steam that has passed through the power station's turbines has to be cooled, to condense it back into water before it can be pumped round again. This is what happens in the huge "cooling towers" seen at power stations.
Some power stations are built on the coast, so they can use sea water to cool the steam instead. However, this warms the sea and can affect the environment, although the fish seem to like it
Coal
Coal provides around 28% of our energy, and oil provides 40%. Mind you, this figure is bound to have changed since this page was written, so check the figures if you want to quote them.
Burning coal produces sulphur dioxide, an acidic gas that contributes to the formation of acid rain. This can be largely avoided using "flue gas desulphurisation" to clean up the gases before they are released into the atmosphere. This method uses limestone, and produces gypsum for the building industry as a by-product. However, it uses a lot of limestone.
Crude oil, Natural gas
Crude oil (called "petroleum") is easier to get out of the ground than coal, as it can flow along pipes. This also makes it cheaper to transport.
Natural gas provides around 20% of the world's consumption of energy, and as well as being burnt in power stations, is used by many people to heat their homes. It is easy to transport along pipes, and gas power stations produce comparatively little pollution
Other fossil fuels
Other fossil fuels are being investigated, such as bituminous sands and oil shale. The difficulty is that they need expensive processing before we can use them; however Canada has large reserves of 'tar sands' , which makes it economic for them to produce a great deal of energy this way.
As far as we know, there is still a lot of oil in the ground. But although oil wells are easy to tap when they're almost full, it's much more difficult to get the oil up later on when there's less oil down there. That's one reason why we're increasingly looking at these other fossil fuels.
Advantages
Very large amounts of electricity can be generated in one place using coal, fairly cheaply.
Transporting oil and gas to the power stations is easy.
Gas-fired power stations are very efficient.
A fossil-fuelled power station can be built almost anywhere, so long as you can get large quantities of fuel to it. Didcot power station, in Oxfordshire, has a dedicated rail page link to supply the coal.
Disadvantages
Disadvantages
Basically, the main drawback of fossil fuels is pollution. Burning any fossil fuel produces carbon dioxide, which contributes to the "greenhouse effect", warming the Earth.
Burning coal produces more carbon dioxide than burning oil or gas. It also produces sulphur dioxide, a gas that contributes to acid rain. We can reduce this before releasing the waste gases into the atmosphere.
Is it renewable?
Fossil fuels are not a renewable energy resource. Once we've burned them all, there isn't any more, and our consumption of fossil fuels has nearly doubled every 20 years since 1900. This is a particular problem for oil, because we also use it to make plastics and many other products.
Ok, you could argue that fossil fuels are renewable because more coal seams and oil fields will be formed if we wait long enough. However that means waiting for many millions of years. That's a long time - we'd have to wait around for longer than the time that humans have existed so far! As far as we today are concerned, we're using it up very fast and it hardly gets replaced at all - so by any sensible human definition fossil fuels are not renewable.
Energy resources - Nuclear
Nuclear power is generated using Uranium, which is a metal mined in various parts of the world.
The first large-scale nuclear power station opened at Calder Hall in Cumbria, England, in 1956.
Nuclear power produces around 11% of the world's energy needs, and produces huge amounts of energy from small amounts of fuel, without the pollution that you'd get from burning fossil fuels.
How it works:
Nuclear power stations work in pretty much the same way as fossil fuel-burning stations, except that a "chain reaction" inside a nuclear reactor makes the heat instead.
The reactor uses Uranium rods as fuel, and the heat is generated by nuclear fission: neutrons smash into the nucleus of the uranium atoms, which split roughly in half and release energy in the form of heat.
Carbon dioxide gas or water is pumped through the reactor to take the heat away, this then heats water to make steam.
The steam drives turbines which drive generators.
The main bit to remember:
Nuclear  Heat water Steam turns Turbine turns
fission to make steam Turbine generator
Electrical
power
How it works continues
Modern nuclear power stations use the same type of turbines and generators as conventional power stations.
In Britain, nuclear power stations are often built on the coast, and use sea water for cooling the steam ready to be pumped round again. This means that they don't have the huge "cooling towers" seen at other power stations.
The reactor is controlled with "control rods", made of boron, which absorb neutrons. When the rods are lowered into the reactor, they absorb more neutrons and the fission process slows down. To generate more power, the rods are raised and more neutrons can crash into uranium atoms.
assessment data are required to support generation resource planning.
Advantages
Nuclear power costs about the same as coal, so it's not expensive to make.
Does not produce smoke or carbon dioxide, so it does not contribute to the greenhouse effect.
Produces huge amounts of energy from small amounts of fuel.
Produces small amounts of waste.
Nuclear power is reliable.
Disadvantages
Although not much waste is produced, it is very, very dangerous. It must be sealed up and buried for many thousands of years to allow the radioactivity to die away. For all that time it must be kept safe from earthquakes, flooding, terrorists and everything else. This is difficult.
Nuclear power is reliable, but a lot of money has to be spent on safety - if it does go wrong, a nuclear accident can be a major disaster. People are increasingly concerned about this - in the 1990's nuclear power was the fastest-growing source of power in much of the world. In 2005 it was the second slowest-growing.
Is it renewable?
Nuclear energy from Uranium is not renewable. Once we've dug up all the Earth's uranium and used it, there isn't any more.
Energy Resources-Renewable and New sources
Refer to module lectures on renewable energy resources e.g Hydropower, Solar Energy, Wind, Biomass and etc and New source
Good Morning