1.
Coal
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Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock usually occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds or coal seams. The harder forms, such as coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure. Coal is composed primarily of carbon, along with quantities of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen. A fossil fuel, coal forms when plant matter is converted into peat, which in turn is converted into lignite, then sub-bituminous coal, after that bituminous coal. This involves biological and geological processes that take place over time, throughout history, coal has been used as an energy resource, primarily burned for the production of electricity and heat, and is also used for industrial purposes, such as refining metals. Coal is the largest source of energy for the generation of electricity worldwide, the extraction of coal, its use in energy production and its byproducts are all associated with environmental and health effects including climate change. Coal is extracted from the ground by coal mining, since 1983, the worlds top coal producer has been China. In 2015 China produced 3,747 million tonnes of coal –47. 7% of 7,861 million tonnes world coal production, in 2015 other large producers were United States, India, European Union and Australia. The word originally took the col in Old English, from Proto-Germanic *kula. In Old Turkic languages, kül is ash, cinders, öčür is quench, the compound charcoal in Turkic is öčür kül, literally quenched ashes, cinders, coals with elided anlaut ö- and inflection affixes -ülmüş. At various times in the geologic past, the Earth had dense forests in low-lying wetland areas, due to natural processes such as flooding, these forests were buried underneath soil. As more and more soil deposited over them, they were compressed, the temperature also rose as they sank deeper and deeper. As the process continued the plant matter was protected from biodegradation and oxidation and this trapped the carbon in immense peat bogs that were eventually covered and deeply buried by sediments. Under high pressure and high temperature, dead vegetation was slowly converted to coal, as coal contains mainly carbon, the conversion of dead vegetation into coal is called carbonization. The wide, shallow seas of the Carboniferous Period provided ideal conditions for coal formation, the exception is the coal gap in the Permian–Triassic extinction event, where coal is rare. Coal is known from Precambrian strata, which predate land plants — this coal is presumed to have originated from residues of algae, in its dehydrated form, peat is a highly effective absorbent for fuel and oil spills on land and water. It is also used as a conditioner for soil to make it able to retain. Lignite, or brown coal, is the lowest rank of coal, jet, a compact form of lignite, is sometimes polished and has been used as an ornamental stone since the Upper Palaeolithic
2.
Fuel
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A fuel is any material that can be made to react with other substances so that it releases chemical or nuclear energy as heat or to be used for work. The concept was applied solely to those materials capable of releasing chemical energy but has since also been applied to other sources of heat energy such as nuclear energy. The heat energy released by reactions of fuels is converted into mechanical energy via a heat engine, other times the heat itself is valued for warmth, cooking, or industrial processes, as well as the illumination that comes with combustion. Fuels are also used in the cells of organisms in a known as cellular respiration. Hydrocarbons and related oxygen-containing molecules are by far the most common source of fuel used by humans, fuels are contrasted with other substances or devices storing potential energy, such as those that directly release electrical energy or mechanical energy. The first known use of fuel was the combustion of wood or sticks by Homo erectus near 2,000,000 years ago, throughout most of human history fuels derived from plants or animal fat were only used by humans. Charcoal, a derivative, has been used since at least 6,000 BCE for melting metals. It was only supplanted by coke, derived from coal, as European forests started to become depleted around the 18th century, charcoal briquettes are now commonly used as a fuel for barbecue cooking. Coal was first used as a fuel around 1000 BCE in China, coal was later used to drive ships and locomotives. By the 19th century, gas extracted from coal was being used for lighting in London. In the 20th and 21st centuries, the use of coal is to generate electricity. Fossil fuels were rapidly adopted during the revolution, because they were more concentrated and flexible than traditional energy sources. They have become a part of our contemporary society, with most countries in the world burning fossil fuels in order to produce power. Currently the trend has been towards renewable fuels, such as biofuels like alcohols, chemical fuels are substances that release energy by reacting with substances around them, most notably by the process of combustion. Most of the energy released in combustion was not stored in the chemical bonds of the fuel. Chemical fuels are divided in two ways, first, by their physical properties, as a solid, liquid or gas. Secondly, on the basis of their occurrence, primary and secondary, solid fuels include wood, charcoal, peat, coal, Hexamine fuel tablets, and pellets made from wood, corn, wheat, rye and other grains. Solid-fuel rocket technology also uses solid fuel, solid fuels have been used by humanity for many years to create fire
3.
Anaerobic digestion
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Anaerobic digestion is a collection of processes by which microorganisms break down biodegradable material in the absence of oxygen. The process is used for industrial or domestic purposes to waste or to produce fuels. Much of the fermentation used industrially to produce food and drink products, as well as home fermentation, anaerobic digestion occurs naturally in some soils and in lake and oceanic basin sediments, where it is usually referred to as anaerobic activity. This is the source of marsh gas methane as discovered by Volta in 1776, the digestion process begins with bacterial hydrolysis of the input materials. Insoluble organic polymers, such as carbohydrates, are broken down to soluble derivatives that become available for other bacteria, acidogenic bacteria then convert the sugars and amino acids into carbon dioxide, hydrogen, ammonia, and organic acids. These bacteria convert these resulting organic acids into acetic acid, along with ammonia, hydrogen. Finally, methanogens convert these products to methane and carbon dioxide, the methanogenic archaea populations play an indispensable role in anaerobic wastewater treatments. Anaerobic digestion is used as part of the process to treat biodegradable waste, as part of an integrated waste management system, anaerobic digestion reduces the emission of landfill gas into the atmosphere. Anaerobic digesters can also be fed with energy crops, such as maize. Anaerobic digestion is used as a source of renewable energy. The process produces a biogas, consisting of methane, carbon dioxide and this biogas can be used directly as fuel, in combined heat and power gas engines or upgraded to natural gas-quality biomethane. The nutrient-rich digestate also produced can be used as fertilizer, many microorganisms affect anaerobic digestion, including acetic acid-forming bacteria and methane-forming archaea. These organisms promote a number of processes in converting the biomass to biogas. Gaseous oxygen is excluded from the reactions by physical containment, anaerobes utilize electron acceptors from sources other than oxygen gas. These acceptors can be the material itself or may be supplied by inorganic oxides from within the input material. When the oxygen source in a system is derived from the organic material itself, the intermediate end products are primarily alcohols, aldehydes. In the presence of specialised methanogens, the intermediates are converted to the end products of methane, carbon dioxide. In an anaerobic system, the majority of the energy contained within the starting material is released by methanogenic bacteria as methane
4.
Organism
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In biology, an organism is any contiguous living system, such as an animal, plant, fungus, protist, archaeon, or bacterium. All known types of organisms are capable of some degree of response to stimuli, reproduction, growth and development and homeostasis. An organism consists of one or more cells, when it has one cell it is known as an organism. Most unicellular organisms are of microscopic scale and are thus described as microorganisms. Humans are multicellular organisms composed of trillions of cells grouped into specialized tissues. An organism may be either a prokaryote or a eukaryote, prokaryotes are represented by two separate domains—bacteria and archaea. Eukaryotic organisms are characterized by the presence of a cell nucleus. Fungi, animals and plants are examples of kingdoms of organisms within the eukaryotes, estimates on the number of Earths current species range from 10 million to 14 million, of which only about 1.2 million have been documented. More than 99% of all species, amounting to five billion species. In 2016, a set of 355 genes from the last universal ancestor of all living organisms living was identified. The term organism first appeared in the English language in 1703 and it is directly related to the term organization. There is a tradition of defining organisms as self-organizing beings. An organism may be defined as an assembly of molecules functioning as a more or less stable whole that exhibits the properties of life. Dictionary definitions can be broad, using such as any living structure, such as a plant, animal, fungus or bacterium, capable of growth. Many definitions exclude viruses and possible man-made non-organic life forms, as viruses are dependent on the machinery of a host cell for reproduction. A superorganism is an organism consisting of individuals working together as a single functional or social unit. There has been controversy about the best way to define the organism, several contributions are responses to the suggestion that the category of organism may well not be adequate in biology. Viruses are not typically considered to be organisms because they are incapable of autonomous reproduction and this controversy is problematic because some cellular organisms are also incapable of independent survival and live as obligatory intracellular parasites
5.
Photosynthesis
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Photosynthesis is a process used by plants and other organisms to convert light energy into chemical energy that can later be released to fuel the organisms activities. In most cases, oxygen is released as a waste product. Most plants, most algae, and cyanobacteria perform photosynthesis, such organisms are called photoautotrophs, in plants, these proteins are held inside organelles called chloroplasts, which are most abundant in leaf cells, while in bacteria they are embedded in the plasma membrane. In these light-dependent reactions, some energy is used to strip electrons from suitable substances, such as water, in the Calvin cycle, atmospheric carbon dioxide is incorporated into already existing organic carbon compounds, such as ribulose bisphosphate. Using the ATP and NADPH produced by the light-dependent reactions, the compounds are then reduced and removed to form further carbohydrates. Cyanobacteria appeared later, the oxygen they produced contributed directly to the oxygenation of the Earth. Today, the rate of energy capture by photosynthesis globally is approximately 130 terawatts. Photosynthetic organisms also convert around 100–115 thousand million tonnes of carbon into biomass per year. Photosynthetic organisms are photoautotrophs, which means that they are able to synthesize food directly from carbon dioxide, however, not all organisms that use light as a source of energy carry out photosynthesis, photoheterotrophs use organic compounds, rather than carbon dioxide, as a source of carbon. In plants, algae, and cyanobacteria, photosynthesis releases oxygen and this is called oxygenic photosynthesis and is by far the most common type of photosynthesis used by living organisms. Although there are differences between oxygenic photosynthesis in plants, algae, and cyanobacteria, the overall process is quite similar in these organisms. There are also varieties of anoxygenic photosynthesis, used mostly by certain types of bacteria. Carbon dioxide is converted into sugars in a process called carbon fixation, photosynthesis provides the energy in the form of free electrons that are used to split carbon from carbon dioxide that is then used to fix that carbon once again as carbohydrate. Carbon fixation is a redox reaction, so photosynthesis supplies the energy that drives both process. In the first stage, light-dependent reactions or light reactions capture the energy of light and use it to make the energy-storage molecules ATP, during the second stage, the light-independent reactions use these products to capture and reduce carbon dioxide. Most organisms that utilize oxygenic photosynthesis use visible light for the light-dependent reactions, some organisms employ even more radical variants of photosynthesis. Some archea use a method that employs a pigment similar to those used for vision in animals. The bacteriorhodopsin changes its configuration in response to sunlight, acting as a proton pump and this produces a proton gradient more directly, which is then converted to chemical energy
6.
Carbon
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Carbon is a chemical element with symbol C and atomic number 6. It is nonmetallic and tetravalent—making four electrons available to form covalent chemical bonds, three isotopes occur naturally, 12C and 13C being stable, while 14C is a radioactive isotope, decaying with a half-life of about 5,730 years. Carbon is one of the few elements known since antiquity, Carbon is the 15th most abundant element in the Earths crust, and the fourth most abundant element in the universe by mass after hydrogen, helium, and oxygen. It is the second most abundant element in the body by mass after oxygen. The atoms of carbon can bond together in different ways, termed allotropes of carbon, the best known are graphite, diamond, and amorphous carbon. The physical properties of carbon vary widely with the allotropic form, for example, graphite is opaque and black while diamond is highly transparent. Graphite is soft enough to form a streak on paper, while diamond is the hardest naturally occurring material known, graphite is a good electrical conductor while diamond has a low electrical conductivity. Under normal conditions, diamond, carbon nanotubes, and graphene have the highest thermal conductivities of all known materials, all carbon allotropes are solids under normal conditions, with graphite being the most thermodynamically stable form. They are chemically resistant and require high temperature to react even with oxygen, the most common oxidation state of carbon in inorganic compounds is +4, while +2 is found in carbon monoxide and transition metal carbonyl complexes. The largest sources of carbon are limestones, dolomites and carbon dioxide, but significant quantities occur in organic deposits of coal, peat, oil. For this reason, carbon has often referred to as the king of the elements. The allotropes of carbon graphite, one of the softest known substances, and diamond. It bonds readily with other small atoms including other carbon atoms, Carbon is known to form almost ten million different compounds, a large majority of all chemical compounds. Carbon also has the highest sublimation point of all elements, although thermodynamically prone to oxidation, carbon resists oxidation more effectively than elements such as iron and copper that are weaker reducing agents at room temperature. Carbon is the element, with a ground-state electron configuration of 1s22s22p2. Its first four ionisation energies,1086.5,2352.6,4620.5 and 6222.7 kJ/mol, are higher than those of the heavier group 14 elements. Carbons covalent radii are normally taken as 77.2 pm,66.7 pm and 60.3 pm, although these may vary depending on coordination number, in general, covalent radius decreases with lower coordination number and higher bond order. Carbon compounds form the basis of all life on Earth
7.
Petroleum
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Petroleum is a naturally occurring, yellow-to-black liquid found in geological formations beneath the Earths surface, which is commonly refined into various types of fuels. Components of petroleum are separated using a technique called fractional distillation and it consists of hydrocarbons of various molecular weights and other organic compounds. The name petroleum covers both naturally occurring unprocessed crude oil and petroleum products that are made up of refined crude oil. A fossil fuel, petroleum is formed when large quantities of dead organisms, usually zooplankton and algae, are buried underneath sedimentary rock, Petroleum has mostly been recovered by oil drilling. Drilling is carried out studies of structural geology, sedimentary basin analysis. Petroleum is used in manufacturing a variety of materials. Concern over the depletion of the earths finite reserves of oil, the burning of fossil fuels plays the major role in the current episode of global warming. The word petroleum comes from Greek, πέτρα for rocks and Greek, the term was found in 10th-century Old English sources. It was used in the treatise De Natura Fossilium, published in 1546 by the German mineralogist Georg Bauer, Petroleum, in one form or another, has been used since ancient times, and is now important across society, including in economy, politics and technology. Great quantities of it were found on the banks of the river Issus, ancient Persian tablets indicate the medicinal and lighting uses of petroleum in the upper levels of their society. By 347 AD, oil was produced from bamboo-drilled wells in China, early British explorers to Myanmar documented a flourishing oil extraction industry based in Yenangyaung that, in 1795, had hundreds of hand-dug wells under production. The mythological origins of the oil fields at Yenangyaung, and its hereditary monopoly control by 24 families, Pechelbronn is said to be the first European site where petroleum has been explored and used. The still active Erdpechquelle, a spring where petroleum appears mixed with water has been used since 1498, Oil sands have been mined since the 18th century. In Wietze in lower Saxony, natural asphalt/bitumen has been explored since the 18th century, both in Pechelbronn as in Wietze, the coal industry dominated the petroleum technologies. In 1848 Young set up a small business refining the crude oil, Young eventually succeeded, by distilling cannel coal at a low heat, in creating a fluid resembling petroleum, which when treated in the same way as the seep oil gave similar products. The production of oils and solid paraffin wax from coal formed the subject of his patent dated 17 October 1850. In 1850 Young & Meldrum and Edward William Binney entered into partnership under the title of E. W. Binney & Co. at Bathgate in West Lothian, the worlds first oil refinery was built in 1856 by Ignacy Łukasiewicz. The demand for petroleum as a fuel for lighting in North America, edwin Drakes 1859 well near Titusville, Pennsylvania, is popularly considered the first modern well
8.
Natural gas
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It is formed when layers of decomposing plant and animal matter are exposed to intense heat and pressure under the surface of the Earth over millions of years. The energy that the plants originally obtained from the sun is stored in the form of bonds in the gas. Natural gas is a fuel used as a source of energy for heating, cooking. It is also used as fuel for vehicles and as a feedstock in the manufacture of plastics. Natural gas is found in underground rock formations or associated with other hydrocarbon reservoirs in coal beds. Petroleum is another resource and fossil fuel found in proximity to. Most natural gas was created over time by two mechanisms, biogenic and thermogenic, biogenic gas is created by methanogenic organisms in marshes, bogs, landfills, and shallow sediments. Deeper in the earth, at temperature and pressure, thermogenic gas is created from buried organic material. In petroleum production gas is burnt as flare gas. The World Bank estimates that over 150 cubic kilometers of gas are flared or vented annually. Before natural gas can be used as a fuel, most, Natural gas is often informally referred to simply as gas, especially when compared to other energy sources such as oil or coal. However, it is not to be confused with gasoline, especially in North America, Natural gas was used by the Chinese in about 500 BCE. They discovered a way to transport gas seeping from the ground in crude pipelines of bamboo to where it was used to salt water to extract the salt. The worlds first industrial extraction of gas started at Fredonia, New York. By 2009,66000 km³ had been used out of the total 850000 km³ of estimated remaining reserves of natural gas. An annual increase in usage of 2–3% could result in currently recoverable reserves lasting significantly less, unwanted natural gas was a disposal problem in the active oil fields. If there was not a market for natural gas near the wellhead it was expensive to pipe to the end user. In the 19th century and early 20th century, unwanted gas was burned off at oil fields
9.
Kerosene
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Kerosene, also known as paraffin, lamp oil and coal oil, is a combustible hydrocarbon liquid which is derived from petroleum, widely used as a fuel in industry as well as households. Its name derives from Greek, κηρός meaning wax, and was registered as a trademark by Abraham Gesner in 1854 before evolving into a genericized trademark and it is sometimes spelled kerosine in scientific and industrial usage. Liquid paraffin is a more viscous and highly refined product which is used as a laxative, paraffin wax is a waxy solid extracted from petroleum. Kerosene is widely used to power jet engines of aircraft and some rocket engines, in parts of Asia, where the price of kerosene is subsidized, it fuels outboard motors on small fishing boats. World total kerosene consumption for all purposes is equivalent to about 1.2 million barrels per day, to prevent confusion between kerosene and the much more flammable and volatile gasoline, some jurisdictions regulate markings or colorings for containers used to store or dispense kerosene. For example, in the United States, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania requires that portable containers used at retail service stations be colored blue and it is miscible in petroleum solvents but immiscible in water. The American Society for Testing and Materials standard specification D-3699-78 recognizes two grades of kerosene, grades 1-K and 2-K, regardless of crude oil source or processing history, kerosenes major components are branched and straight chain alkanes and naphthenes, which normally account for at least 70% by volume. Aromatic hydrocarbons in this range, such as alkylbenzenes and alkylnaphthalenes. Olefins are usually not present at more than 5% by volume, the flash point of kerosene is between 37 and 65 °C, and its autoignition temperature is 220 °C. The pour point of kerosene depends on grade, with aviation fuel standardized at −47 °C. 1-K grade kerosene freezes around -40 °C, heat of combustion of kerosene is similar to that of diesel fuel, its lower heating value is 43.1 MJ/kg, and its higher heating value is 46.2 MJ/kg. In the United Kingdom, two grades of heating oil are defined, BS2869 Class C1 is the lightest grade used for lanterns, camping stoves, wick heaters, and mixed with gasoline in some vintage combustion engines as a substitute for tractor vaporising oil. BS2869 Class C2 is a heavier distillate, which is used as heating oil. Premium kerosene is sold in 5 or 20 liter containers from hardware, camping. Standard kerosene is usually dispensed in bulk by a tanker and is undyed, National and international standards define the properties of several grades of kerosene used for jet fuel. Flash point and freezing point properties are of particular interest for operation and safety, the process of distilling crude oil/petroleum into kerosene, as well as other hydrocarbon compounds, was first written about in the 9th century by the Persian scholar Rāzi. In his Kitab al-Asrar, the physician and chemist Razi described two methods for the production of kerosene, termed naft abyad, using an apparatus called an alembic, one method used clay as an absorbent, whereas the other method used ammonium chloride. The distillation process was repeated until all most of the volatile hydrocarbon fractions had been removed, Kerosene was also produced during the same period from oil shale and bitumen by heating the rock to extract the oil, which was then distilled
10.
Propane
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Propane is a three-carbon alkane with the molecular formula C3H8, a gas, at standard temperature and pressure, but compressible to a transportable liquid. A by-product of natural gas processing and petroleum refining, it is used as a fuel for engines, oxy-gas torches, portable stoves. Propane is one of a group of liquefied petroleum gases, the others include butane, propylene, butadiene, butylene, isobutylene, and mixtures thereof. Propane was first identified as a component in gasoline by Walter O. Snelling of the U. S. Bureau of Mines in 1910. The volatility of these lighter hydrocarbons caused them to be known as wild because of the vapor pressures of unrefined gasoline. On March 31, the New York Times reported on Snellings work with liquefied gas and that a steel bottle will carry enough gas to light an ordinary home for three weeks. It was during this time that Snelling, in cooperation with Frank P. Peterson, Chester Kerr, together, they established American Gasol Co. the first commercial marketer of propane. Snelling had produced relatively pure propane by 1911, and on March 25,1913, a separate method of producing LP gas through compression was created by Frank Peterson and its patent granted on July 2,1912. The 1920s saw increased production of LP gas, with the first year of recorded production totaling 223,000 US gallons in 1922. In 1927, annual marketed LP gas production reached 1 million US gallons, and by 1935, major industry developments in the 1930s included the introduction of railroad tank car transport, gas odorization, and the construction of local bottle-filling plants. The year 1945 marked the first year that annual LP gas sales reached a billion gallons, by 1947, 62% of all U. S. homes had been equipped with either natural gas or propane for cooking. In 1950,1,000 propane-fueled buses were ordered by the Chicago Transit Authority, in 2004 it was reported to be a growing $8-billion to $10-billion industry with over 15 billion US gallons of propane being used annually in the U. S. The prop- root found in propane and names of compounds with three-carbon chains was derived from propionic acid. Propane is produced as a by-product of two processes, natural gas processing and petroleum refining. The processing of natural gas involves removal of butane, propane, additionally, oil refineries produce some propane as a by-product of cracking petroleum into gasoline or heating oil. The supply of propane cannot easily be adjusted to meet increased demand, about 90% of U. S. propane is domestically produced. The United States imports about 10% of the propane consumed each year, with about 70% of that coming from Canada via pipeline, the remaining 30% of imported propane comes to the United States from other sources via ocean transport. After it is produced, North American propane is stored in salt caverns
11.
Volatility (chemistry)
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In chemistry and physics, volatility is quantified by the tendency of a substance to vaporize. Volatility is directly related to a vapor pressure. At a given temperature, a substance with higher vapor pressure vaporizes more readily than a substance with a vapor pressure. The vapor pressure of a substance is the pressure at which its gas phase is in equilibrium with its condensed phases and it is a measure of the tendency of molecules and atoms to escape from a liquid or a solid. The higher the pressure of a liquid at a given temperature, the higher the volatility. The vapor pressure chart displays the vapor pressures dependency for a variety of liquids as a function of temperature, for example, at any given temperature, chloromethane has the highest vapor pressure of any of the liquids in the chart. It also has the lowest normal boiling point, which is where the pressure curve intersects the horizontal pressure line of one atmosphere of absolute vapor pressure
12.
Hydrogen
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Hydrogen is a chemical element with chemical symbol H and atomic number 1. With a standard weight of circa 1.008, hydrogen is the lightest element on the periodic table. Its monatomic form is the most abundant chemical substance in the Universe, non-remnant stars are mainly composed of hydrogen in the plasma state. The most common isotope of hydrogen, termed protium, has one proton, the universal emergence of atomic hydrogen first occurred during the recombination epoch. At standard temperature and pressure, hydrogen is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, nonmetallic, since hydrogen readily forms covalent compounds with most nonmetallic elements, most of the hydrogen on Earth exists in molecular forms such as water or organic compounds. Hydrogen plays an important role in acid–base reactions because most acid-base reactions involve the exchange of protons between soluble molecules. In ionic compounds, hydrogen can take the form of a charge when it is known as a hydride. The hydrogen cation is written as though composed of a bare proton, Hydrogen gas was first artificially produced in the early 16th century by the reaction of acids on metals. Industrial production is mainly from steam reforming natural gas, and less often from more energy-intensive methods such as the electrolysis of water. Most hydrogen is used near the site of its production, the two largest uses being fossil fuel processing and ammonia production, mostly for the fertilizer market, Hydrogen is a concern in metallurgy as it can embrittle many metals, complicating the design of pipelines and storage tanks. Hydrogen gas is flammable and will burn in air at a very wide range of concentrations between 4% and 75% by volume. The enthalpy of combustion is −286 kJ/mol,2 H2 + O2 →2 H2O +572 kJ Hydrogen gas forms explosive mixtures with air in concentrations from 4–74%, the explosive reactions may be triggered by spark, heat, or sunlight. The hydrogen autoignition temperature, the temperature of spontaneous ignition in air, is 500 °C, the detection of a burning hydrogen leak may require a flame detector, such leaks can be very dangerous. Hydrogen flames in other conditions are blue, resembling blue natural gas flames, the destruction of the Hindenburg airship was a notorious example of hydrogen combustion and the cause is still debated. The visible orange flames in that incident were the result of a mixture of hydrogen to oxygen combined with carbon compounds from the airship skin. H2 reacts with every oxidizing element, the ground state energy level of the electron in a hydrogen atom is −13.6 eV, which is equivalent to an ultraviolet photon of roughly 91 nm wavelength. The energy levels of hydrogen can be calculated fairly accurately using the Bohr model of the atom, however, the atomic electron and proton are held together by electromagnetic force, while planets and celestial objects are held by gravity. The most complicated treatments allow for the effects of special relativity
13.
Anthracite
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Anthracite is a hard, compact variety of coal that has a submetallic luster. It has the highest carbon content, the fewest impurities, Anthracite is the most metamorphosed type of coal, in which the carbon content is between 92. 1% and 98%. The term is applied to varieties of coal which do not give off tarry or other hydrocarbon vapours when heated below their point of ignition. Anthracite ignites with difficulty and burns with a short, blue, Anthracite is categorized into standard grade, which is used mainly in power generation, and high grade and ultra high grade, the principal uses of which are in the metallurgy sector. Anthracite accounts for about 1% of global reserves, and is mined in only a few countries around the world. China accounts for the majority of production, other producers are Russia, Ukraine, North Korea, South Africa, Vietnam, the UK, Australia, Canada. Total production in 2010 was 670 million tons, Anthracite derives from the Greek anthrakítēs, literally coal-like. Other terms which refer to anthracite are black coal, hard coal, stone coal, dark coal, coffee coal, blind coal, Kilkenny coal, crow coal or craw coal, markets to distinguish it from its competitors. Culm has different meanings in British and American English, england, culm is the imperfect anthracite of north Devon and Cornwall, which was used as a pigment. The term is used to refer to the rock strata whose deposits are found in both Britain and in the Rhenish hill countries. Lastly, it may refer to coal exported from Britain during the 19th century, america, culm refers to the waste or slack from anthracite mining, mostly dust and small pieces not suitable for use in home furnaces. Anthracite is similar in appearance to the jet and is sometimes used as a jet imitation. Anthracite differs from ordinary bituminous coal by its hardness, its higher relative density of 1. 3–1.4, and luster. It contains a percentage of fixed carbon and a low percentage of volatile matter. It is also free from included soft or fibrous notches and does not soil the fingers when rubbed, anthracitization is the transformation of bituminous coal into anthracite. The moisture content of fresh-mined anthracite generally is less than 15 percent, the heat content of anthracite ranges from 22 to 28 million Btu per short ton on a moist, mineral-matter-free basis. The heat content of coal consumed in the United States averages 25 million Btu/ton, on the as-received basis. Since the 1980s, anthracite refuse or mine waste has been used for power generation in a form of recycling
14.
Hydrocarbon
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In organic chemistry, a hydrocarbon is an organic compound consisting entirely of hydrogen and carbon, and thus are group 14 hydrides. Hydrocarbons from which one atom has been removed are functional groups. Aromatic hydrocarbons, alkanes, alkenes, cycloalkanes and alkyne-based compounds are different types of hydrocarbons, the classifications for hydrocarbons, defined by IUPAC nomenclature of organic chemistry are as follows, Saturated hydrocarbons are the simplest of the hydrocarbon species. They are composed entirely of single bonds and are saturated with hydrogen, the formula for acyclic saturated hydrocarbons is CnH2n+2. The most general form of saturated hydrocarbons is CnH2n+2, where r is the number of rings and those with exactly one ring are the cycloalkanes. Saturated hydrocarbons are the basis of petroleum fuels and are found as linear or branched species. Substitution reaction is their characteristics property, hydrocarbons with the same molecular formula but different structural formulae are called structural isomers. As given in the example of 3-methylhexane and its higher homologues, chiral saturated hydrocarbons constitute the side chains of biomolecules such as chlorophyll and tocopherol. Unsaturated hydrocarbons have one or more double or triple bonds between carbon atoms and those with double bond are called alkenes. Those with one double bond have the formula CnH2n and those containing triple bonds are called alkyne. Those with one triple bond have the formula CnH2n−2, aromatic hydrocarbons, also known as arenes, are hydrocarbons that have at least one aromatic ring. Hydrocarbons can be gases, liquids, waxes or low melting solids or polymers, in terms of shells, carbon consists of an incomplete outer shell, which comprises 4 electrons, and thus has 4 electrons available for covalent or dative bonding. Some hydrocarbons also are abundant in the solar system, lakes of liquid methane and ethane have been found on Titan, Saturns largest moon, confirmed by the Cassini-Huygens Mission. Hydrocarbons are also abundant in nebulae forming polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon compounds, hydrocarbons are a primary energy source for current civilizations. The predominant use of hydrocarbons is as a fuel source. In their solid form, hydrocarbons take the form of asphalt, mixtures of volatile hydrocarbons are now used in preference to the chlorofluorocarbons as a propellant for aerosol sprays, due to chlorofluorocarbons impact on the ozone layer. Methane and ethane are gaseous at ambient temperatures and cannot be liquefied by pressure alone. Propane is however easily liquefied, and exists in propane bottles mostly as a liquid, butane is so easily liquefied that it provides a safe, volatile fuel for small pocket lighters
15.
Oil field
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An oil field or oilfield is a region with an abundance of oil wells extracting petroleum from below ground. Because the oil reservoirs typically extend over an area, possibly several hundred kilometres across. In addition, there may be exploratory wells probing the edges, pipelines to transport the oil elsewhere, because an oil field may be remote from civilization, establishing a field is often an extremely complicated exercise in logistics. This goes beyond requirements for drilling, to include associated infrastructure, for instance, workers require housing to allow them to work onsite for months or years. In turn, housing and equipment require electricity and water, in cold regions, pipelines may need to be heated. Also, excess gas may be burned off if there is no way to make use of it—which requires a furnace, chimney. More than 40,000 oil fields are scattered around the globe, on land, the largest are the Ghawar Field in Saudi Arabia and the Burgan Field in Kuwait, with more than 60 billion barrels estimated in each. Most oil fields are much smaller, according to the US Department of Energy, as of 2003 the US alone had over 30,000 oil fields. In the modern age, the location of oil fields with oil reserves is a key underlying factor in many geopolitical conflicts. The term oilfield is also used as a shorthand to refer to the petroleum industry. However, it is accurate to divide the oil industry into three sectors, upstream, midstream and downstream. Oil Fields from Space - nighttime satellite images showing fields around the world
16.
Methane clathrate
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Methane clathrates are common constituents of the shallow marine geosphere and they occur in deep sedimentary structures and form outcrops on the ocean floor. Methane hydrates are believed to form by migration of gas from deep along geological faults, the ice-core methane clathrate record is a primary source of data for global warming research, along with oxygen and carbon dioxide. The observed density is around 0.9 g/cm3, which means that methane hydrate will float to the surface of the sea or of a lake unless it is bound in place by being formed in or anchored to sediment. One litre of fully saturated methane clathrate solid would therefore contain about 120 grams of methane, methane forms a structure I hydrate with two dodecahedral and six tetradecahedral water cages per unit cell. This compares with a number of 20 for methane in aqueous solution. A methane clathrate MAS NMR spectrum recorded at 275 K and 3.1 MPa shows a peak for each cage type, in 2003, a clay-methane hydrate intercalate was synthesized in which a methane hydrate complex was introduced at the interlayer of a sodium-rich montmorillonite clay. The upper temperature stability of this phase is similar to that of structure I hydrate, methane clathrates are restricted to the shallow lithosphere. In addition, deep fresh water lakes may host gas hydrates as well, e. g. the fresh water Lake Baikal, continental deposits have been located in Siberia and Alaska in sandstone and siltstone beds at less than 800 m depth. Oceanic deposits seem to be widespread in the shelf and can occur within the sediments at depth or close to the sediment-water interface. They may cap even larger deposits of gaseous methane, there are two distinct types of oceanic deposit. The most common is dominated by methane contained in a structure I clathrate, here, the methane is isotopically light, which indicates that it is derived from the microbial reduction of CO2. The clathrates in these deposits are thought to have formed in situ from the microbially produced methane, since the δ13C values of clathrate. These deposits are located within a zone around 300–500 m thick in the sediments where they coexist with methane dissolved in the fresh, not salt. Above this zone methane is present in its dissolved form at concentrations that decrease towards the sediment surface. At Blake Ridge on the Atlantic continental rise, the GHSZ started at 190 m depth and continued to 450 m, measurements indicated that methane occupied 0-9% by volume in the GHSZ, and ~12% in the gaseous zone. In the less common type found near the sediment surface some samples have a higher proportion of longer-chain hydrocarbons contained in a structure II clathrate. Carbon from this type of clathrate is isotopically heavier and is thought to have migrated upwards from deep sediments, examples of this type of deposit have been found in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caspian Sea. Some deposits have characteristics intermediate between the microbially and thermally sourced types and are considered to be formed from a mixture of the two
17.
Fossil
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Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals, plants, and other organisms from the remote past. The totality of fossils, both discovered and undiscovered, and their placement in fossiliferous rock formations and sedimentary layers is known as the fossil record. The study of fossils across geological time, how they were formed, such a preserved specimen is called a fossil if it is older than some minimum age, most often the arbitrary date of 10,000 years. The observation that fossils were associated with certain rock strata led early geologists to recognize a geological timescale in the 19th century. The development of dating techniques in the early 20th century allowed geologists to determine the numerical or absolute age of the various strata. Like extant organisms, fossils vary in size from microscopic, even single bacterial cells one micrometer in diameter, to gigantic, such as dinosaurs, Fossils may also consist of the marks left behind by the organism while it was alive, such as animal tracks or feces. These types of fossil are called trace fossils, as opposed to body fossils, finally, past life leaves some markers that cannot be seen but can be detected in the form of biochemical signals, these are known as chemofossils or biosignatures. The process of fossilization varies according to type and external conditions. Permineralization is a process of fossilization that occurs when an organism is buried, the empty spaces within an organism become filled with mineral-rich groundwater. Minerals precipitate from the groundwater, occupying the empty spaces and this process can occur in very small spaces, such as within the cell wall of a plant cell. Small scale permineralization can produce very detailed fossils, for permineralization to occur, the organism must become covered by sediment soon after death or soon after the initial decay process. The degree to which the remains are decayed when covered determines the later details of the fossil, some fossils consist only of skeletal remains or teeth, other fossils contain traces of skin, feathers or even soft tissues. This is a form of diagenesis, in some cases the original remains of the organism completely dissolve or are otherwise destroyed. The remaining organism-shaped hole in the rock is called an external mold, if this hole is later filled with other minerals, it is a cast. An endocast or internal mold is formed when sediments or minerals fill the cavity of an organism. This is a form of cast and mold formation. If the chemistry is right, the organism can act as a nucleus for the precipitation of minerals such as siderite, if this happens rapidly before significant decay to the organic tissue, very fine three-dimensional morphological detail can be preserved. Nodules from the Carboniferous Mazon Creek fossil beds of Illinois, USA, are among the best documented examples of such mineralization, replacement occurs when the shell, bone or other tissue is replaced with another mineral
18.
Georgius Agricola
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Georgius Agricola was a German Catholic, scholar and scientist. Known as the father of mineralogy, he was born at Glauchau in Saxony and his birth name was Georg Pawer, Agricola is the Latinized version of his name, by which he was known his entire adult life, Agricola and Bauer mean farmer in their respective languages. He is best known for his book De Re Metallica, here, he also devoted himself to the study of medicine, physics, and chemistry. After the death of Mosellanus, he went to Italy from 1524 to 1526, in 1530, Prince Maurice of Saxony appointed him historiographer with an annual allowance, and he migrated to Chemnitz, the centre of the mining industry, to widen the range of his observations. The citizens showed their appreciation of his learning by appointing him town physician in 1533, in that year, he published a book about Greek and Roman weights and measures, De Mensuis et Ponderibus. He was also elected burgomaster of Chemnitz, Chemnitz was a violent centre of the Protestant movement, while Agricola never wavered in his allegiance to the Roman Catholic Church, he was forced to resign his office. He now lived apart from the movements of the time. In 1544, he published the De ortu et causis subterraneorum, in which he laid the first foundations of a physical geology, the delay is thought to be due to the books many woodcuts. The work is a systematic, illustrated treatise on mining and extractive metallurgy and it shows processes to extract ores from the ground, and metals from ore. Until that time, Pliny the Elders work Historia Naturalis was the source of information on metals. Agricola acknowledged his debt to ancient authors, such as Pliny and Theophrastus, in geology, Agricola described and illustrated how ore veins occur in and on the ground. He described prospecting for ore veins and surveying in detail, as well as washing the ores to collect the valuable minerals, such as gold. The work shows water mills used in mining, such as the machine for lifting men and material into, Agricola described mining methods which are now obsolete, such as fire-setting, which involved building fires against hard rock faces. The hot rock was quenched with water, and the thermal shock weakened it enough for easy removal and it was a dangerous method when used in underground, made redundant by explosives. The work contains, in an appendix, the German equivalents for the terms used in the Latin text. Modern words that derive from the work include fluorspar and bismuth, in another example, believing the black rock of the Schloßberg at Stolpen to be the same as Pliny the Elders basalt, Agricola applied this name to it, and thus originated a petrological term. In 1912, the Mining Magazine published an English translation of De re metallica, the translation was made by Herbert Hoover, the American mining engineer and his wife Lou Henry Hoover. Hoover was later President of the United States, in spite of the early proof that Agricola had given of the tolerance of his own religious attitude, he was not suffered to end his days in peace
19.
Mikhail Lomonosov
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Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov was a Russian polymath, scientist and writer, who made important contributions to literature, education, and science. Among his discoveries were the atmosphere of Venus and the Law of Mass Conservation in chemical reactions and his spheres of science were natural science, chemistry, physics, mineralogy, history, art, philology, optical devices and others. Lomonosov was also a poet and influenced the formation of the modern Russian literary language, Lomonosov was born in the village of Denisovka in Archangelgorod Governorate, on an island not far from Kholmogory, in the far north of Russia. Lomonosovs mother was Vasilys first wife, a daughter, Elena Ivanovna Sivkova. He remained at Denisovka until he was ten, when his father decided that he was old enough to participate in his business ventures, learning was young Lomonosovs passion, however, not business. The boys thirst for knowledge was insatiable, Lomonosov had been taught to read as a boy by his neighbor Ivan Shubny, and he spent every spare moment with his books. He continued his studies with the deacon, S. N. Sabelnikov, but for years the only books he had access to were religious texts. When he was fourteen, Lomonosov was given copies of Meletius Smotrytskys Modern Church Slavonic, on his religious views, Lomonosov was a deist. In 1724, his father married for the third and final time, Lomonosov and his stepmother Irina had an acrimonious relationship. Unhappy at home and intent on obtaining an education, which Lomonosov could not receive in Denisovka. In 1730, at nineteen, Lomonosov went to Moscow on foot, not long after arriving, Lomonosov obtained admission into the Slavic Greek Latin Academy by falsely claiming to be a priests son. That initial falsehood would nearly get him expelled from the academy a few years later when discovered, Lomonosov lived on three kopecks a day, living off only black bread and kvass, but he made rapid progress scholastically. After three years in Moscow he was sent to Kiev to study for one year at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and he quickly became dissatisfied with the education he was receiving there, and returned to Moscow several months ahead of schedule, resuming his studies there. He completed a study course in only five years, graduating at the top of his class. In 1736, Lomonosov was awarded a scholarship to St. Petersburg Academy and he plunged into his studies and was rewarded with a two-year grant to study abroad at the University of Marburg, in Germany. The University of Marburg was among Europes most important universities in the century due to the presence of the philosopher Christian Wolff. Lomonosov became one of Wolffs personal students while at Marburg, both philosophically and as a science administrator, this connection would be the most influential of Lomonosovs life
20.
Energy Information Administration
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The U. S. Energy Information Administration is a principal agency of the U. S. EIA programs cover data on coal, petroleum, natural gas, electric, renewable and nuclear energy. EIA is part of the U. S. Department of Energy, the EIA disseminates its data products, analyses, reports, and services to customers and stakeholders primarily through its website and the customer contact center. Located in Washington, D. C. the EIA has about 325 federal employees, by law, the EIA’s products are prepared independently of policy considerations. The EIA neither formulates nor advocates any policy conclusions. ”More than 2 million people use the EIA’s information online each month, some of the EIA’s products include, General Interest Energy Information Energy Explained, Energy information written for a general, non-technical audience. A nonpartisan guide to the range of energy topics from biodiesel to uranium. Energy Kids Page, A very popular product from the EIA is its “Kid’s Page”, which students, citizens. Energy Glossary, Common energy terms defined in plain language and this Week in Petroleum, Weekly summary and explanation of events in U. S. and world petroleum markets, including weekly data. Natural Gas Weekly Update, Weekly summary and discussion of events, Data and Surveys Gasoline and Diesel Fuel Update, Weekly price data for U. S. national and regional averages. Monthly Energy Review, Provides statistics on monthly and annual U. S. national energy consumption going back in some cases to 1949, the figures are given in units of quads Annual Energy Review, EIAs primary report of historical annual energy statistics. For many series, data begin with the year 1949 and this report has been superseded by the Monthly Energy Review and was not produced for 2012. Country Energy Profiles, Data by country, region, and commercial group for 219 countries with additional country analysis notes for 87 of these, country Analysis Briefs, EIAs in-depth analyses of energy production, consumption, imports, and exports for 36 individual countries and regions. Residential Energy Consumption Survey, EIAs comprehensive survey and analysis of energy consumption, household characteristics. Projections and Outlooks Short-Term Energy Outlook, Energy projections for the next 13-24 months, Annual Energy Outlook, Projection and analysis of U. S. energy supply, demand, and prices through 2040 based on EIAs National Energy Modeling System. Projections are currently based on existing legislation, without assumption of any future Congressional action or technological advancement, international Energy Outlook, EIAs assessment of the outlook for international energy markets through 2040. It also provided the FEA with data collection enforcement authority for gathering data from energy producing, Section 205 of this law established the Energy Information Administration as the primary federal government authority on energy statistics and analysis to carry out a. The same law established that EIA’s processes and products are independent from review by Executive Branch officials, the majority of EIA energy data surveys are based on the general mandates set forth above. However, there are some surveys specifically mandated by law, including, EIA-28, eIA-1605 and 1605EZ, Voluntary Reporting of Greenhouse Gases - Section 1605 of the Energy Policy Act of 1992. EIA-886, Annual Survey of Alternative Fueled Vehicle Suppliers and Users - Section 503 of the Energy Policy Act of 1992, eIA-858, Uranium Marketing Annual Survey - Section 1015 of the Energy Policy Act of 1992
21.
Nuclear power
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Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions that release nuclear energy to generate heat, which most frequently is then used in steam turbines to produce electricity in a nuclear power plant. The term includes nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion, since all electricity supplying technologies use cement, etc. during construction, emissions are yet to be brought to zero. Each result is contrasted with coal and fossil gas at 820 and 490 g CO2 eq/kWh, there is a social debate about nuclear power. Proponents, such as the World Nuclear Association and Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy, contend that nuclear power is a safe, opponents, such as Greenpeace International and NIRS, contend that nuclear power poses many threats to people and the environment. These include the Chernobyl disaster which occurred in 1986, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, there have also been some nuclear submarine accidents. Energy production from coal, petroleum, natural gas and hydroelectricity has caused a number of fatalities per unit of energy generated due to air pollution. In 2015, Ten new reactors were connected to the grid, seven reactors were permanently shut down. 441 reactors had a net capacity of 382,855 megawatts of electricity. 67 new nuclear reactors were under construction, Most of the new activity is in China where there is an urgent need to control pollution from coal plants. In October 2016, Watts Bar 2 became the first new United States reactor to enter commercial operation since 1996. The same year, his doctoral student James Chadwick discovered the neutron, further work by Enrico Fermi in the 1930s focused on using slow neutrons to increase the effectiveness of induced radioactivity. Experiments bombarding uranium with neutrons led Fermi to believe he had created a new, transuranic element and they determined that the relatively tiny neutron split the nucleus of the massive uranium atoms into two roughly equal pieces, contradicting Fermi. Numerous scientists, including Leó Szilárd, who was one of the first, recognized that if fission reactions released additional neutrons, a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction could result. In the United States, where Fermi and Szilárd had both emigrated, this led to the creation of the first man-made reactor, known as Chicago Pile-1, which achieved criticality on December 2,1942. In 1945, the pocketbook The Atomic Age heralded the untapped atomic power in everyday objects and depicted a future where fossil fuels would go unused. One science writer, David Dietz, wrote that instead of filling the gas tank of a car two or three times a week, people travel for a year on a pellet of atomic energy the size of a vitamin pill. The United Kingdom, Canada, and the USSR proceeded over the course of the late 1940s, electricity was generated for the first time by a nuclear reactor on December 20,1951, at the EBR-I experimental station near Arco, Idaho, which initially produced about 100 kW. Work was also researched in the US on nuclear marine propulsion
22.
Hydroelectricity
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Hydroelectricity is electricity produced from hydropower. In 2015 hydropower generated 16. 6% of the total electricity and 70% of all renewable electricity. Hydropower is produced in 150 countries, with the Asia-Pacific region generating 33 percent of global hydropower in 2013, China is the largest hydroelectricity producer, with 920 TWh of production in 2013, representing 16.9 percent of domestic electricity use. The cost of hydroelectricity is relatively low, making it a source of renewable electricity. The hydro station consumes no water, unlike coal or gas plants, the average cost of electricity from a hydro station larger than 10 megawatts is 3 to 5 U. S. cents per kilowatt-hour. With a dam and reservoir it is also a source of electricity since the amount produced by the station can be changed up or down very quickly to adapt to changing energy demands. Once a hydroelectric complex is constructed, the project produces no direct waste, Hydropower has been used since ancient times to grind flour and perform other tasks. In the mid-1770s, French engineer Bernard Forest de Bélidor published Architecture Hydraulique which described vertical-, by the late 19th century, the electrical generator was developed and could now be coupled with hydraulics. The growing demand for the Industrial Revolution would drive development as well, in 1878 the worlds first hydroelectric power scheme was developed at Cragside in Northumberland, England by William George Armstrong. It was used to power an arc lamp in his art gallery. The old Schoelkopf Power Station No.1 near Niagara Falls in the U. S. side began to produce electricity in 1881. The first Edison hydroelectric power station, the Vulcan Street Plant, began operating September 30,1882, in Appleton, Wisconsin, by 1886 there were 45 hydroelectric power stations in the U. S. and Canada. By 1889 there were 200 in the U. S. alone, at the beginning of the 20th century, many small hydroelectric power stations were being constructed by commercial companies in mountains near metropolitan areas. Grenoble, France held the International Exhibition of Hydropower and Tourism with over one million visitors, by 1920 as 40% of the power produced in the United States was hydroelectric, the Federal Power Act was enacted into law. The Act created the Federal Power Commission to regulate hydroelectric power stations on federal land, as the power stations became larger, their associated dams developed additional purposes to include flood control, irrigation and navigation. Federal funding became necessary for development and federally owned corporations, such as the Tennessee Valley Authority. Hydroelectric power stations continued to become larger throughout the 20th century, Hydropower was referred to as white coal for its power and plenty. Hoover Dams initial 1,345 MW power station was the worlds largest hydroelectric station in 1936
23.
Geothermal power
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Geothermal power is power generated by geothermal energy. Technologies in use include dry steam power stations, flash steam power stations, Geothermal electricity generation is currently used in 24 countries, while geothermal heating is in use in 70 countries. As of 2015, worldwide geothermal power capacity amounts to 12.8 gigawatts, International markets grew at an average annual rate of 5 percent over the last three years and global geothermal power capacity is expected to reach 14. 5–17.6 GW by 2020. Countries generating more than 15 percent of their electricity from geothermal sources include El Salvador, Kenya, Geothermal power is considered to be a sustainable, renewable source of energy because the heat extraction is small compared with the Earths heat content. In the 20th century, demand for electricity led to the consideration of geothermal power as a generating source, prince Piero Ginori Conti tested the first geothermal power generator on 4 July 1904 in Larderello, Italy. It successfully lit four light bulbs, later, in 1911, the worlds first commercial geothermal power station was built there. Experimental generators were built in Beppu, Japan and the Geysers, California, in the 1920s, in 1958, New Zealand became the second major industrial producer of geothermal electricity when its Wairakei station was commissioned. Wairakei was the first station to use flash steam technology, in 1960, Pacific Gas and Electric began operation of the first successful geothermal electric power station in the United States at The Geysers in California. The original turbine lasted for more than 30 years and produced 11 MW net power, the binary cycle power station was first demonstrated in 1967 in Russia and later introduced to the USA in 1981, following the 1970s energy crisis and significant changes in regulatory policies. This technology allows the use of lower temperature resources than were previously recoverable. In 2006, a binary cycle station in Chena Hot Springs, Alaska, came on-line, Geothermal electric stations have until recently been built exclusively where high temperature geothermal resources are available near the surface. The development of binary cycle power plants and improvements in drilling, demonstration projects are operational in Landau-Pfalz, Germany, and Soultz-sous-Forêts, France, while an earlier effort in Basel, Switzerland was shut down after it triggered earthquakes. Other demonstration projects are under construction in Australia, the United Kingdom, the thermal efficiency of geothermal electric stations is low, around 7–10%, because geothermal fluids are at a low temperature compared with steam from boilers. By the laws of thermodynamics this low temperature limits the efficiency of engines in extracting useful energy during the generation of electricity. Exhaust heat is wasted, unless it can be used directly and locally, for example in greenhouses, timber mills, and district heating. The efficiency of the system does not affect operational costs as it would for a coal or other fossil fuel plant, in order to produce more energy than the pumps consume, electricity generation requires high temperature geothermal fields and specialized heat cycles. Because geothermal power does not rely on sources of energy, unlike, for example, wind or solar. However the global average capacity factor was 74. 5% in 2008, the earth’s heat content is about 1031 joules
24.
Solar energy
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Active solar techniques include the use of photovoltaic systems, concentrated solar power and solar water heating to harness the energy. Passive solar techniques include orienting a building to the Sun, selecting materials with favorable thermal mass or light-dispersing properties, the large magnitude of solar energy available makes it a highly appealing source of electricity. The United Nations Development Programme in its 2000 World Energy Assessment found that the potential of solar energy was 1. This is several times larger than the world energy consumption. In 2011, the International Energy Agency said that the development of affordable, inexhaustible, hence the additional costs of the incentives for early deployment should be considered learning investments, they must be wisely spent and need to be widely shared. The Earth receives 174,000 terawatts of incoming solar radiation at the upper atmosphere, approximately 30% is reflected back to space while the rest is absorbed by clouds, oceans and land masses. The spectrum of light at the Earths surface is mostly spread across the visible. Most of the population live in areas with insolation levels of 150-300 watts/m². Solar radiation is absorbed by the Earths land surface, oceans – which cover about 71% of the globe –, warm air containing evaporated water from the oceans rises, causing atmospheric circulation or convection. When the air reaches an altitude, where the temperature is low, water vapor condenses into clouds. The latent heat of water condensation amplifies convection, producing atmospheric phenomena such as wind, sunlight absorbed by the oceans and land masses keeps the surface at an average temperature of 14 °C. By photosynthesis, green plants convert solar energy into stored energy, which produces food, wood. The total solar energy absorbed by Earths atmosphere, oceans and land masses is approximately 3,850,000 exajoules per year, in 2002, this was more energy in one hour than the world used in one year. Photosynthesis captures approximately 3,000 EJ per year in biomass, geography affects solar energy potential because areas that are closer to the equator have a greater amount of solar radiation. However, the use of photovoltaics that can follow the position of the sun can significantly increase the energy potential in areas that are farther from the equator. Time variation effects the potential of energy because during the nighttime there is little solar radiation on the surface of the Earth for solar panels to absorb. This limits the amount of energy that solar panels can absorb in one day, cloud cover can affect the potential of solar panels because clouds block incoming light from the sun and reduce the light available for solar cells. In addition, land availability has an effect on the available solar energy because solar panels can only be set up on land that is otherwise unused
25.
Tidal power
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Tidal power or tidal energy is a form of hydropower that converts the energy obtained from tides into useful forms of power, mainly electricity. Although not yet used, tidal power has potential for future electricity generation. Tides are more predictable than wind energy and solar power, historically, tide mills have been used both in Europe and on the Atlantic coast of North America. The incoming water was contained in large ponds, and as the tide went out. The earliest occurrences date from the Middle Ages, or even from Roman times, the process of using falling water and spinning turbines to create electricity was introduced in the U. S. and Europe in the 19th century. The worlds first large-scale tidal power plant was the Rance Tidal Power Station in France and it was the largest tidal power station in terms of output until Sihwa Lake Tidal Power Station opened in South Korea in August,2011. The Sihwa station uses sea wall defense barriers complete with 10 turbines generating 254 MW, Tidal power is taken from the Earths oceanic tides. Tidal forces are periodic variations in gravitational attraction exerted by celestial bodies and these forces create corresponding motions or currents in the worlds oceans. Due to the attraction to the oceans, a bulge in the water level is created. When the sea level is raised, water from the middle of the ocean is forced to move toward the shorelines and this occurrence takes place in an unfailing manner, due to the consistent pattern of the moon’s orbit around the earth. Tidal power is the technology that draws on energy inherent in the orbital characteristics of the Earth–Moon system. Other natural energies exploited by human technology originate directly or indirectly with the Sun, including fuel, conventional hydroelectric, wind, biofuel, wave. A tidal generator converts the energy of tidal flows into electricity, greater tidal variation and higher tidal current velocities can dramatically increase the potential of a site for tidal electricity generation. This loss of energy has caused the rotation of the Earth to slow in the 4.5 billion years since its formation. During the last 620 million years the period of rotation of the earth has increased from 21.9 hours to 24 hours, while tidal power will take additional energy from the system, the effect is negligible and would only be noticed over millions of years. Some tidal generators can be built into the structures of existing bridges or are entirely submersed, land constrictions such as straits or inlets can create high velocities at specific sites, which can be captured with the use of turbines. These turbines can be horizontal, vertical, open, or ducted, Tidal barrages make use of the potential energy in the difference in height between high and low tides. When using tidal barrages to generate power, the energy from a tide is seized through strategic placement of specialized dams
26.
Wind power
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Wind power is the use of air flow through wind turbines to mechanically power generators for electric power. The net effects on the environment are far less problematic than those of power sources. Wind farms consist of individual wind turbines which are connected to the electric power transmission network. Onshore wind is a source of electric power, competitive with or in many places cheaper than coal or gas plants. Offshore wind is steadier and stronger than on land, and offshore farms have less visual impact, small onshore wind farms can feed some energy into the grid or provide electric power to isolated off-grid locations. Wind power gives variable power which is consistent from year to year. It is therefore used in conjunction with other power sources to give a reliable supply. As the proportion of power in a region increases, a need to upgrade the grid. In addition, weather forecasting permits the power network to be readied for the predictable variations in production that occur. As of 2015, Denmark generates 40% of its power from wind. In 2014 global wind power capacity expanded 16% to 369,553 MW, yearly wind energy production is also growing rapidly and has reached around 4% of worldwide electric power usage,11. 4% in the EU. Wind power has been used as long as humans have put sails into the wind, for more than two millennia wind-powered machines have ground grain and pumped water. Wind power was available and not confined to the banks of fast-flowing streams, or later. Wind-powered pumps drained the polders of the Netherlands, and in regions such as the American mid-west or the Australian outback, wind pumps provided water for live stock. The first windmill used for the production of power was built in Scotland in July 1887 by Prof James Blyth of Andersons College. Blyth offered the surplus power to the people of Marykirk for lighting the main street, however. The Brush wind turbine had a rotor 17 metres in diameter and was mounted on an 18 metres tower, although large by todays standards, the machine was only rated at 12 kW. The connected dynamo was used either to charge a bank of batteries or to operate up to 100 incandescent light bulbs, with the development of electric power, wind power found new applications in lighting buildings remote from centrally-generated power
27.
Wood fuel
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Wood fuel is a fuel, such as firewood, charcoal, chips, sheets, pellets, and sawdust. The particular form used depends upon factors such as source, quantity, quality, sawmill waste and construction industry by-products also include various forms of lumber tailings. The discovery of how to fire for the purpose of burning wood is regarded as one of humanitys most important advances. The use of wood as a source for heating is much older than civilization and is assumed to have been used by Neanderthals. Today, burning of wood is the largest use of energy derived from a solid fuel biomass, Wood fuel can be used for cooking and heating, and occasionally for fueling steam engines and steam turbines that generate electricity. Wood may be used indoors in a furnace, stove, or fireplace, or outdoors in a furnace, campfire, in permanent structures and in caves, hearths were constructed or established—surfaces of stone or another noncombustible material upon which a fire could be built. Smoke escaped through a hole in the roof. In contrast to civilizations in relatively arid regions, the Greeks, Romans, Celts, Britons, over the centuries there was a partial deforestation of climax forests and the evolution of the remainder to coppice with standards woodland as the primary source of wood fuel. These woodlands involved a continuous cycle of new stems harvested from old stumps, one of the earliest printed books on woodland management, in English, was John Evelyns Sylva, or a discourse on forest trees advising landowners on the proper management of forest estates. H. L. Edlin, in Woodland Crafts in Britain,1949 outlines the extraordinary techniques employed, and throughout this time the preferred form of wood fuel was the branches of cut coppice stems bundled into faggots. Larger, bent or deformed stems that were of no use to the woodland craftsmen were converted to the end of World War two. Since then much of these woodlands have been converted to broadscale agriculture, during the Edo period of Japan, wood was used for many purposes, and the consumption of wood led Japan to develop a forest management policy during that era. Demand for timber resources was on the not only for fuel, but also for construction of ships and buildings. As a result, forest fires occurred, along with floods, around 1666, the shogun made it a policy to reduce logging and increase the planting of trees. This policy decreed that only the shogun, or a daimyō, by the 18th century, Japan had developed detailed scientific knowledge about silviculture and plantation forestry. The development of the chimney and the allowed for more effective exhaustion of the smoke. Masonry heaters or stoves went a further by capturing much of the heat of the fire and exhaust in a large thermal mass. The metal stove was a technological development concurrent with the industrial revolution, stoves were manufactured or constructed pieces of equipment that contained the fire on all sides and provided a means for controlling the draft—the amount of air allowed to reach the fire
28.
Waste-to-energy
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Waste-to-energy or energy-from-waste is the process of generating energy in the form of electricity and/or heat from the primary treatment of waste. WtE is a form of energy recovery, most WtE processes produce electricity and/or heat directly through combustion, or produce a combustible fuel commodity, such as methane, methanol, ethanol or synthetic fuels. The first incinerator or Destructor was built in Nottingham UK in 1874 by Manlove, the first US incinerator was built in 1885 on Governors Island in New York, New York. The first waste incinerator in Denmark was built in 1903 in Frederiksberg The first facility in the Czech Republic was built in 1905 in Brno, incineration, the combustion of organic material such as waste with energy recovery, is the most common WtE implementation. All new WtE plants in OECD countries incinerating waste must meet emission standards, including those on nitrogen oxides, sulphur dioxide, heavy metals. Hence, modern incineration plants are different from old types. Modern incinerators reduce the volume of the waste by 95-96 percent, depending upon composition. Incinerators may emit fine particulate, heavy metals, trace dioxin and acid gas, other concerns include proper management of residues, toxic fly ash, which must be handled in hazardous waste disposal installation as well as incinerator bottom ash, which must be reused properly. Critics argue that incinerators destroy valuable resources and they may reduce incentives for recycling, the question, however, is an open one, as countries in Europe recycling the most also incinerate their residual waste to avoid landfilling. Incinerators have electric efficiencies of 14-28%, in order to avoid losing the rest of the energy, it can be used for e. g. district heating. The total efficiencies of cogeneration incinerators are typically higher than 80%, the method of using incineration to convert municipal solid waste to energy is a relatively old method of WtE production. Incineration generally entails burning waste to boil water which powers steam generators that make electric energy and heat to be used in homes, businesses, institutions and industries. One problem associated with incinerating MSW to make electrical energy is the potential for pollutants to enter the atmosphere with the gases from the boiler. These pollutants can be acidic and in the 1980s were reported to environmental damage by turning rain into acid rain. Since then, the industry has removed this problem by the use of lime scrubbers, by passing the smoke through the basic lime scrubbers, any acids that might be in the smoke are neutralized which prevents the acid from reaching the atmosphere and hurting the environment. Many other devices, such as filters, reactors. According to the New York Times, modern incineration plants are so clean that many times more dioxin is now released from home fireplaces and backyard barbecues than from incineration. According to the German Environmental Ministry, because of stringent regulations, waste incineration plants are no longer significant in terms of emissions of dioxins, dust, and heavy metals
29.
Non-renewable resource
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A non-renewable resource is a resource that does not renew itself at a sufficient rate for sustainable economic extraction in meaningful human time-frames. An example is carbon-based, organically-derived fuel, the original organic material, with the aid of heat and pressure, becomes a fuel such as oil or gas. Earth minerals and metal ores, fossil fuels and groundwater in certain aquifers are all considered non-renewable resources, in contrast, resources such as timber and wind are considered renewable resources, largely because their localized replenishment can occur within time frames meaningful to humans. Earth minerals and metal ores are examples of non-renewable resources and these processes generally take from tens of thousands to millions of years, through plate tectonics, tectonic subsidence and crustal recycling. The localized deposits of metal ores near the surface which can be extracted economically by humans are non-renewable in human time-frames, there are certain rare earth minerals and elements that are more scarce and exhaustible than others. These are in demand in manufacturing, particularly for the electronics industry. Natural resources such as coal, petroleum and natural gas take thousands of years to form naturally and these sources of carbon are also considered non-renewable, although their rate of formation/replenishment on the sea floor is not known. However their extraction at economically viable costs and rates has yet to be determined, at present, the main energy source used by humans is non-renewable fossil fuels. Since the dawn of internal combustion engine technologies in the 17th century, petroleum, as a result, conventional infrastructure and transport systems, which are fitted to combustion engines, remain prominent throughout the globe. The continual use of fossil fuels at the current rate is believed to increase global warming, breeder reactors, and when it is developed, fusion power, among conventional renewable energy sources, such as solar and falling water. With the careful monitoring of waste products also being required upon the use of other renewable energy sources. The use of nuclear technology relying on fission requires Naturally occurring radioactive material as fuel, uranium, the most common fission fuel, and is present in the ground at relatively low concentrations and mined in 19 countries. This mined uranium is used to fuel energy-generating nuclear reactors with fissionable uranium-235 which generates heat that is used to power turbines to generate electricity. Nuclear power provides about 6% of the energy and 13–14% of the worlds electricity. Nuclear energy production is associated with potentially dangerous radioactive contamination as it relies upon unstable elements, in particular, nuclear power facilities produce about 200,000 metric tons of low and intermediate level waste and 10,000 metric tons of high level waste each year worldwide. Natural resources, known as renewable resources, are replaced by processes and forces persistent in the natural environment. There are intermittent and reoccurring renewables, and recyclable materials, which are utilized during a cycle across a certain amount of time, and can be harnessed for any number of cycles. The production of goods and services by manufacturing products in economic systems creates many types of waste during production, the material is then either incinerated, buried in a landfill or recycled for reuse
30.
Tonnes
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The SI symbol for the tonne is t, adopted at the same time as the unit itself in 1879. Its use is also official, for the metric ton, within the United States, having been adopted by the US National Institute of Standards and it is a symbol, not an abbreviation, and should not be followed by a period. Informal and non-approved symbols or abbreviations include T, mT, MT, in French and all English-speaking countries that are predominantly metric, tonne is the correct spelling. Before metrication in the UK the unit used for most purposes was the Imperial ton of 2,240 pounds avoirdupois, equivalent to 1,016 kg, differing by just 1. 6% from the tonne. Ton and tonne are both derived from a Germanic word in use in the North Sea area since the Middle Ages to designate a large cask. A full tun, standing about a high, could easily weigh a tonne. An English tun of wine weighs roughly a tonne,954 kg if full of water, in the United States, the unit was originally referred to using the French words millier or tonneau, but these terms are now obsolete. The Imperial and US customary units comparable to the tonne are both spelled ton in English, though they differ in mass, one tonne is equivalent to, Metric/SI,1 megagram. Equal to 1000000 grams or 1000 kilograms, megagram, Mg, is the official SI unit. Mg is distinct from mg, milligram, pounds, Exactly 1000/0. 453 592 37 lb, or approximately 2204.622622 lb. US/Short tons, Exactly 1/0. 907 184 74 short tons, or approximately 1.102311311 ST. One short ton is exactly 0.90718474 t, imperial/Long tons, Exactly 1/1. 016 046 9088 long tons, or approximately 0.9842065276 LT. One long ton is exactly 1.0160469088 t, for multiples of the tonne, it is more usual to speak of thousands or millions of tonnes. Kilotonne, megatonne, and gigatonne are more used for the energy of nuclear explosions and other events. When used in context, there is little need to distinguish between metric and other tons, and the unit is spelt either as ton or tonne with the relevant prefix attached. *The equivalent units columns use the short scale large-number naming system used in most English-language countries. †Values in the equivalent short and long tons columns are rounded to five significant figures, ǂThough non-standard, the symbol kt is also sometimes used for knot, a unit of speed for sea-going vessels, and should not be confused with kilotonne. A metric ton unit can mean 10 kilograms within metal trading and it traditionally referred to a metric ton of ore containing 1% of metal. In the case of uranium, the acronym MTU is sometimes considered to be metric ton of uranium, in the petroleum industry the tonne of oil equivalent is a unit of energy, the amount of energy released by burning one tonne of crude oil, approximately 42 GJ
31.
Gigatonne
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The SI symbol for the tonne is t, adopted at the same time as the unit itself in 1879. Its use is also official, for the metric ton, within the United States, having been adopted by the US National Institute of Standards and it is a symbol, not an abbreviation, and should not be followed by a period. Informal and non-approved symbols or abbreviations include T, mT, MT, in French and all English-speaking countries that are predominantly metric, tonne is the correct spelling. Before metrication in the UK the unit used for most purposes was the Imperial ton of 2,240 pounds avoirdupois, equivalent to 1,016 kg, differing by just 1. 6% from the tonne. Ton and tonne are both derived from a Germanic word in use in the North Sea area since the Middle Ages to designate a large cask. A full tun, standing about a high, could easily weigh a tonne. An English tun of wine weighs roughly a tonne,954 kg if full of water, in the United States, the unit was originally referred to using the French words millier or tonneau, but these terms are now obsolete. The Imperial and US customary units comparable to the tonne are both spelled ton in English, though they differ in mass, one tonne is equivalent to, Metric/SI,1 megagram. Equal to 1000000 grams or 1000 kilograms, megagram, Mg, is the official SI unit. Mg is distinct from mg, milligram, pounds, Exactly 1000/0. 453 592 37 lb, or approximately 2204.622622 lb. US/Short tons, Exactly 1/0. 907 184 74 short tons, or approximately 1.102311311 ST. One short ton is exactly 0.90718474 t, imperial/Long tons, Exactly 1/1. 016 046 9088 long tons, or approximately 0.9842065276 LT. One long ton is exactly 1.0160469088 t, for multiples of the tonne, it is more usual to speak of thousands or millions of tonnes. Kilotonne, megatonne, and gigatonne are more used for the energy of nuclear explosions and other events. When used in context, there is little need to distinguish between metric and other tons, and the unit is spelt either as ton or tonne with the relevant prefix attached. *The equivalent units columns use the short scale large-number naming system used in most English-language countries. †Values in the equivalent short and long tons columns are rounded to five significant figures, ǂThough non-standard, the symbol kt is also sometimes used for knot, a unit of speed for sea-going vessels, and should not be confused with kilotonne. A metric ton unit can mean 10 kilograms within metal trading and it traditionally referred to a metric ton of ore containing 1% of metal. In the case of uranium, the acronym MTU is sometimes considered to be metric ton of uranium, in the petroleum industry the tonne of oil equivalent is a unit of energy, the amount of energy released by burning one tonne of crude oil, approximately 42 GJ
32.
Greenhouse gas
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A greenhouse gas is a gas in an atmosphere that absorbs and emits radiation within the thermal infrared range. This process is the cause of the greenhouse effect. The primary greenhouse gases in Earths atmosphere are water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, without greenhouse gases, the average temperature of Earths surface would be about −18 °C, rather than the present average of 15 °C. In the Solar System, the atmospheres of Venus, Mars, human activities since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution have produced a 40% increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, from 280 ppm in 1750 to 400 ppm in 2015. This increase has occurred despite the uptake of a portion of the emissions by various natural sinks involved in the carbon cycle. Anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions come from combustion of fuels, principally coal, oil. Greenhouse gases are those that absorb and emit infrared radiation in the range emitted by Earth. The proportion of an emission remaining in the atmosphere after a time is the airborne fraction. The annual airborne fraction is the ratio of the increase in a given year to that years total emissions. Over the last 50 years the annual airborne fraction for CO2 has been increasing at 0.25 ±0. 21%/year, therefore, they do not contribute significantly to the greenhouse effect and usually are omitted when discussing greenhouse gases. Some gases have indirect radiative effects and this happens in two main ways. One way is that when they break down in the atmosphere they produce another greenhouse gas, for example, methane and carbon monoxide are oxidized to give carbon dioxide. Oxidation of CO to CO2 directly produces an increase in radiative forcing although the reason is subtle. The peak of the thermal IR emission from Earths surface is close to a strong vibrational absorption band of CO2. On the other hand, the single CO vibrational band only absorbs IR at much higher frequencies, where the ~300 K thermal emission of the surface is at least a factor of ten lower. Oxidation of methane to CO2, which requires reactions with the OH radical, produces a reduction, since CO2 is a weaker greenhouse gas than methane. As described below this is not the story, since the oxidations of CO. In any case, the calculation of the radiative effect needs to include both the direct and indirect forcing
33.
Radiative forcing
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Radiative forcing or climate forcing is defined as the difference of insolation absorbed by the Earth and energy radiated back to space. Typically, radiative forcing is quantified at the tropopause in units of watts per meter of the Earths surface. A positive forcing warms the system, while negative forcing cools it, causes of radiative forcing include changes in insolation and the concentrations of radiatively active gases, commonly known as greenhouse gases and aerosols. Almost all of the energy that affects Earths climate is received as radiant energy from the Sun, the planet and its atmosphere absorb and reflect some of the energy, while long-wave energy is radiated back into space. The balance between absorbed and radiated energy determines the global temperature. Because the atmosphere absorbs some of the re-radiated long-wave energy, the planet is warmer than it would be in the absence of the atmosphere, any such alteration is a radiative forcing, and changes the balance. This happens continuously as sunlight hits the surface, clouds and aerosols form, in this report radiative forcing values are for changes relative to preindustrial conditions defined at 1750 and are expressed in Watts per square meter. In simple terms, radiative forcing is. the rate of energy change per unit area of the globe as measured at the top of the atmosphere, a typical value of λ is 0.8 K/, which gives a warming of 3K for doubling of CO2. Radiative forcing can be estimated in different ways for different components, for solar irradiance, the radiative forcing is simply the change in the average amount of solar energy absorbed per square meter of the Earths area. Since the Earths cross-sectional area exposed to the Sun is equal to 1/4 of the area of the Earth. This must be multiplied by the fraction of incident sunlight that is absorbed, F=, the albedo is approximately 0.3, so F is approximately equal to 0.7. Thus, the forcing is the change in the solar intensity divided by 4. Likewise, a change in albedo will produce a solar forcing equal to the change in albedo divided by 4 multiplied by the solar constant and these calculations can often be simplified into an algebraic formulation that is specific to that gas. The relationship between carbon dioxide and radiative forcing is logarithmic and thus increased concentrations have a progressively smaller warming effect, a different formula applies for other greenhouse gases such as methane and N2O or CFCs, with coefficients that can be found e. g. in the IPCC reports. Radiative forcing is a way to compare different causes of perturbations in a climate system. We propose an alternative, the troposphere and stratosphere forcing. We present GCM calculations showing that it is a more reliable predictor of this GCMs surface temperature change than radiative forcing. It is a candidate to supplement radiative forcing as a metric for comparing different mechanisms, in this quote, GCM stands for global circulation model, and the word predictive does not refer to the ability of GCMs to forecast climate change
34.
Global warming
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Global warming and climate change are terms for the observed century-scale rise in the average temperature of the Earths climate system and its related effects. Multiple lines of evidence show that the climate system is warming. The largest human influence has been emission of gases such as carbon dioxide, methane. These findings have been recognized by the science academies of the major industrialized nations and are not disputed by any scientific body of national or international standing. Future climate change and associated impacts will differ from region to region around the globe, anticipated effects include warming global temperature, rising sea levels, changing precipitation, and expansion of deserts in the subtropics. Warming is expected to be greater over land than over the oceans and greatest in the Arctic, with the retreat of glaciers, permafrost. Effects significant to humans include the threat to security from decreasing crop yields. Possible societal responses to global warming include mitigation by emissions reduction, adaptation to its effects, building systems resilient to its effects, most countries are parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, whose ultimate objective is to prevent dangerous anthropogenic climate change. Public reactions to global warming and concern about its effects are also increasing, a global 2015 Pew Research Center report showed a median of 54% consider it a very serious problem. There are significant regional differences, with Americans and Chinese among the least concerned, the global average surface temperature shows a warming of 0.85 °C in the period 1880 to 2012, based on multiple independently produced datasets. Earths average surface temperature rose by 0. 74±0.18 °C over the period 1906–2005, the rate of warming almost doubled for the last half of that period. The rest has melted ice and warmed the continents and atmosphere, the average temperature of the lower troposphere has increased between 0.12 and 0.135 °C per decade since 1979, according to satellite temperature measurements. The warming that is evident in the temperature record is consistent with a wide range of observations. The probability that these changes could have occurred by chance is virtually zero, temperature changes vary over the globe. Since 1979, land temperatures have increased about twice as fast as ocean temperatures, ocean temperatures increase more slowly than land temperatures because of the larger effective heat capacity of the oceans and because the ocean loses more heat by evaporation. Since the beginning of industrialisation the temperature difference between the hemispheres has increased due to melting of sea ice and snow in the North. Average arctic temperatures have been increasing at almost twice the rate of the rest of the world in the past 100 years, the thermal inertia of the oceans and slow responses of other indirect effects mean that climate can take centuries or longer to adjust to changes in forcing. Some of this warming will be driven by past natural forcings which are still seeking equilibrium in the climate system
35.
Renewable energy
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Renewable energy is energy that is collected from renewable resources, which are naturally replenished on a human timescale, such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, waves, and geothermal heat. Renewable energy often provides energy in four important areas, electricity generation, air and water heating/cooling, transportation, based on REN21s 2016 report, renewables contributed 19. 2% to humans global energy consumption and 23. 7% to their generation of electricity in 2014 and 2015, respectively. This energy consumption is divided as 8. 9% coming from biomass,4. 2% as heat energy,3. 9% hydro electricity and 2. 2% is electricity from wind, solar, geothermal. Worldwide investments in renewable technologies amounted to more than US$286 billion in 2015, with countries like China, globally, there are an estimated 7.7 million jobs associated with the renewable energy industries, with solar photovoltaics being the largest renewable employer. As of 2015 worldwide, more than half of all new electricity capacity installed was renewable, Renewable energy resources exist over wide geographical areas, in contrast to other energy sources, which are concentrated in a limited number of countries. Rapid deployment of energy and energy efficiency is resulting in significant energy security, climate change mitigation. In international public opinion there is strong support for promoting renewable sources such as solar power. At the national level, at least 30 nations around the already have renewable energy contributing more than 20 percent of energy supply. National renewable energy markets are projected to continue to grow strongly in the coming decade, for example, in Denmark the government decided to switch the total energy supply to 100% renewable energy by 2050. While many renewable energy projects are large-scale, renewable technologies are also suited to rural and remote areas and developing countries, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said that renewable energy has the ability to lift the poorest nations to new levels of prosperity. Renewable energy systems are becoming more efficient and cheaper. Their share of energy consumption is increasing. Growth in consumption of coal and oil could end by 2020 due to increased uptake of renewables, in its various forms, it derives directly from the sun, or from heat generated deep within the earth. Included in the definition is electricity and heat generated from solar, wind, ocean, hydropower, biomass, geothermal resources, rapid deployment of renewable energy and energy efficiency, and technological diversification of energy sources, would result in significant energy security and economic benefits. New government spending, regulation and policies helped the industry weather the financial crisis better than many other sectors. As of 2011, small solar PV systems provide electricity to a few million households, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said that renewable energy has the ability to lift the poorest nations to new levels of prosperity. At the national level, at least 30 nations around the already have renewable energy contributing more than 20% of energy supply. Some countries have much higher long-term policy targets of up to 100% renewables, outside Europe, a diverse group of 20 or more other countries target renewable energy shares in the 2020–2030 time frame that range from 10% to 50%
36.
Phytoplankton
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Phytoplankton /ˌfaɪtoʊˈplæŋktən/ are the autotrophic components of the plankton community and a key part of oceans, seas and freshwater basin ecosystems. The name comes from the Greek words φυτόν, meaning plant, most phytoplankton are too small to be individually seen with the unaided eye. Phytoplankton are photosynthesizing microscopic organisms that inhabit the upper layer of almost all oceans. They are agents for primary production, the creation of organic compounds from carbon dioxide dissolved in the water, Phytoplankton obtain energy through the process of photosynthesis and must therefore live in the well-lit surface layer of an ocean, sea, lake, or other body of water. Phytoplankton account for half of all activity on Earth. Their cumulative energy fixation in carbon compounds is the basis for the vast majority of oceanic, the effects of anthropogenic warming on the global population of phytoplankton is an area of active research. Additionally, changes in the mortality of phytoplankton due to rates of zooplankton grazing may be significant, as a side note, one of the more remarkable food chains in the ocean – remarkable because of the small number of links – is that of phytoplankton-feeding krill feeding baleen whales. Phytoplankton are also dependent on minerals. However, across large regions of the World Ocean such as the Southern Ocean and this has led to some scientists advocating iron fertilization as a means to counteract the accumulation of human-produced carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Large-scale experiments have added iron to the oceans to promote phytoplankton growth, however, controversy about manipulating the ecosystem and the efficiency of iron fertilization has slowed such experiments. Phytoplankton depend on other substances to survive as well, in particular, Vitamin B is crucial. Areas in the ocean have been identified as having a lack of Vitamin B. While almost all species are obligate photoautotrophs, there are some that are mixotrophic and other. Of these, the best known are dinoflagellate genera such as Noctiluca and Dinophysis, the term phytoplankton encompasses all photoautotrophic microorganisms in aquatic food webs. Phytoplankton serve as the base of the food web, providing an essential ecological function for all aquatic life. However, unlike terrestrial communities, where most autotrophs are plants, phytoplankton are a group, incorporating protistan eukaryotes. There are about 5,000 known species of marine phytoplankton, how such diversity evolved despite scarce resources is unclear. In terms of numbers, the most important groups of phytoplankton include the diatoms, cyanobacteria and dinoflagellates, one group, the coccolithophorids, is responsible for the release of significant amounts of dimethyl sulfide into the atmosphere
37.
Zooplankton
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Plankton are organisms drifting in oceans, seas, and bodies of fresh water. The word zooplankton is derived from the Greek zoon, meaning animal, individual zooplankton are usually microscopic, but some are larger and visible with the naked eye. Zooplankton is a categorization spanning a range of organism sizes including small protozoans, although zooplankton are primarily transported by ambient water currents, many have locomotion, used to avoid predators or to increase prey encounter rate. Ecologically important protozoan zooplankton groups include the foraminiferans, radiolarians and dinoflagellates and this wide phylogenetic range includes a similarly wide range in feeding behavior, filter feeding, predation and symbiosis with autotrophic phytoplankton as seen in corals. Zooplankton feed on bacterioplankton, phytoplankton, other zooplankton, detritus, as a result, zooplankton are primarily found in surface waters where food resources are abundant. Just as any species can be limited within a geographical region, however, species of zooplankton are not dispersed uniformly or randomly within a region of the ocean. As with phytoplankton, ‘patches’ of zooplankton species exist throughout the ocean, zooplankton patchiness can also be influenced by biological factors, as well as other physical factors. Biological factors include breeding, predation, concentration of phytoplankton, the physical factor that influences zooplankton distribution the most is mixing of the water column that affects nutrient availability and, in turn, phytoplankton production. Since they are small, zooplankton can respond rapidly to increases in phytoplankton abundance, for instance. Zooplankton can also act as a disease reservoir, crustacean zooplankton have been found to house the bacterium Vibrio cholerae, which causes cholera, by allowing the cholera vibrios to attach to their chitinous exoskeletons. This symbiotic relationship enhances the ability to survive in an aquatic environment, as the exoskeleton provides the bacterium with carbon. A global coverage database of zooplankton biomass and abundance data
38.
Anoxic sea water
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Anoxic waters are areas of sea water, fresh water, or groundwater that are depleted of dissolved oxygen and are a more severe condition of hypoxia. The US Geological Survey defines anoxic groundwater as those with dissolved oxygen concentration of less than 0.5 milligrams per litre and this condition is generally found in areas that have restricted water exchange. Anoxic conditions will occur if the rate of oxidation of organic matter by bacteria is greater than the supply of dissolved oxygen, Anoxic waters are a natural phenomenon, and have occurred throughout geological history. In fact, some postulate that the Permian–Triassic extinction event, an extinction of species from worlds oceans. At present anoxic basins exist, for example, in the Baltic Sea, recently, there have been some indications that eutrophication has increased the extent of the anoxic zones in areas including the Baltic Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, and Hood Canal in Washington State. Anoxic conditions result from factors, for example, stagnation conditions, density stratification, inputs of organic material. Examples of which are fjords and deep ocean western boundaries where circulation is especially low while production at upper levels is exceptionally high. In wastewater treatment, the absence of oxygen alone is indicated anoxic while the term anaerobic is used to indicate the absence of any common electron acceptor such as nitrate, sulfate or oxygen. When oxygen is depleted in a basin, bacteria first turn to the second-best electron acceptor, denitrification occurs, and the nitrate will be consumed rather rapidly. After reducing some other elements, the bacteria will turn to reducing sulfate. This results in the byproduct of hydrogen sulfide, a toxic to most biota and responsible for the characteristic rotten egg smell. Below a few centimeters from the surface the water is oxygen free. Anoxia is further influenced by biochemical oxygen demand, which is the amount oxygen used by organisms in the process of breaking down organic matter. BOD is influenced by the type of present, the pH of the water, temperature. BOD is directly related to the amount of dissolved oxygen available, especially in smaller bodies of such as rivers. As BOD increases, available oxygen decreases and this causes stress on larger organisms. BOD comes from natural and anthropogenic sources, including, dead organisms, manure, wastewater, in the Baltic Sea, the slowed rate of decomposition under anoxic conditions has left remarkably preserved fossils retaining impressions of soft body parts, in Lagerstätten. Eutrophication, an influx of nutrients, often a byproduct of agricultural run-off and sewage discharge, can result in large, upon a bloom’s conclusion, the dead algae sink to the bottom and are broken down until all oxygen is expended
39.
Geologic time scale
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The table of geologic time spans, presented here, agrees with the nomenclature, dates and standard color codes set forth by the International Commission on Stratigraphy. Evidence from radiometric dating indicates that Earth is about 4.54 billion years old, the geology or deep time of Earth’s past has been organized into various units according to events which took place in each period. Older time spans, which predate the reliable record, are defined by their absolute age. Some other planets and moons within the Solar System have sufficiently rigid structures to have preserved records of their own histories, for example, Venus, Mars, dominantly fluid planets, such as the gas giants, do not preserve their history in a comparable manner. Apart from the Late Heavy Bombardment, events on other planets probably had little influence on the Earth. Construction of a scale that links the planets is, therefore, of only limited relevance to the Earths time scale. The existence, timing, and terrestrial effects of the Late Heavy Bombardment is still debated, the largest defined unit of time is the supereon, composed of eons. Eons are divided into eras, which are in turn divided into periods, epochs, the terms eonothem, erathem, system, series, and stage are used to refer to the layers of rock that correspond to these periods of geologic time in Earths history. Geologists qualify these units as early, mid, and late when referring to time, and lower, middle, for example, the lower Jurassic Series in chronostratigraphy corresponds to the early Jurassic Epoch in geochronology. The adjectives are capitalized when the subdivision is formally recognized, and lower case when not, thus early Miocene but Early Jurassic. Geologic units from the time but different parts of the world often look different and contain different fossils. For example, in North America the Lower Cambrian is called the Waucoban series that is subdivided into zones based on succession of trilobites. In East Asia and Siberia, the unit is split into Alexian, Atdabanian. A key aspect of the work of the International Commission on Stratigraphy is to reconcile this conflicting terminology, the term Anthropocene is used informally by popular culture and a growing number of scientists to describe the current epoch in which we are living. The term was coined by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer in 2000 to describe the current time, others say that humans have not even started to leave their biggest impact on Earth, and therefore the Anthropocene hasnt even started yet. Whatever the case, the ICS has not officially approved the term, leonardo da Vinci concurred with Aristotles interpretation that fossils represented the remains of ancient life. The 11th-century Persian geologist Avicenna and the 13th-century Dominican bishop Albertus Magnus extended Aristotles explanation into a theory of a petrifying fluid. Avicenna also first proposed one of the principles underlying geologic time scales, the Chinese naturalist Shen Kuo also recognized the concept of deep time
40.
Organic compound
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An organic compound is virtually any chemical compound that contains carbon, although a consensus definition remains elusive and likely arbitrary. Organic compounds are rare terrestrially, but of importance because all known life is based on organic compounds. The most basic petrochemicals are considered the building blocks of organic chemistry, for historical reasons discussed below, a few types of carbon-containing compounds, such as carbides, carbonates, simple oxides of carbon, and cyanides are considered inorganic. The distinction between organic and inorganic compounds, while useful in organizing the vast subject of chemistry. Organic chemistry is the science concerned with all aspects of organic compounds, Organic synthesis is the methodology of their preparation. The word organic is historical, dating to the 1st century, for many centuries, Western alchemists believed in vitalism. This is the theory that certain compounds could be synthesized only from their classical elements—earth, water, air, vitalism taught that these organic compounds were fundamentally different from the inorganic compounds that could be obtained from the elements by chemical manipulation. Vitalism survived for a while even after the rise of modern atomic theory and it first came under question in 1824, when Friedrich Wöhler synthesized oxalic acid, a compound known to occur only in living organisms, from cyanogen. A more decisive experiment was Wöhlers 1828 synthesis of urea from the inorganic salts potassium cyanate, urea had long been considered an organic compound, as it was known to occur only in the urine of living organisms. Wöhlers experiments were followed by others, in which increasingly complex organic substances were produced from inorganic ones without the involvement of any living organism. Even though vitalism has been discredited, scientific nomenclature retains the distinction between organic and inorganic compounds, still, even the broadest definition requires excluding alloys that contain carbon, including steel. The C-H definition excludes compounds that are considered organic, neither urea nor oxalic acid is organic by this definition, yet they were two key compounds in the vitalism debate. The IUPAC Blue Book on organic nomenclature specifically mentions urea and oxalic acid, other compounds lacking C-H bonds but traditionally considered organic include benzenehexol, mesoxalic acid, and carbon tetrachloride. Mellitic acid, which contains no C-H bonds, is considered an organic substance in Martian soil. The C-H bond-only rule also leads to somewhat arbitrary divisions in sets of carbon-fluorine compounds, for example, CF4 would be considered by this rule to be inorganic, whereas CF3H would be organic. Organic compounds may be classified in a variety of ways, one major distinction is between natural and synthetic compounds. Another distinction, based on the size of organic compounds, distinguishes between small molecules and polymers, natural compounds refer to those that are produced by plants or animals. Many of these are extracted from natural sources because they would be more expensive to produce artificially
41.
Matter
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All the everyday objects that we can bump into, touch or squeeze are ultimately composed of atoms. This ordinary atomic matter is in turn made up of interacting subatomic particles—usually a nucleus of protons and neutrons, typically, science considers these composite particles matter because they have both rest mass and volume. By contrast, massless particles, such as photons, are not considered matter, however, not all particles with rest mass have a classical volume, since fundamental particles such as quarks and leptons are considered point particles with no effective size or volume. Nevertheless, quarks and leptons together make up ordinary matter, Matter exists in states, the classical solid, liquid, and gas, as well as the more exotic plasma, Bose–Einstein condensates, fermionic condensates, and quark–gluon plasma. For much of the history of the natural sciences people have contemplated the nature of matter. The idea that matter was built of discrete building blocks, the so-called particulate theory of matter, was first put forward by the Greek philosophers Leucippus and Democritus, Matter should not be confused with mass, as the two are not the same in modern physics. Matter is itself a physical substance of which systems may be composed, while mass is not a substance, while there are different views on what should be considered matter, the mass of a substance or system is the same irrespective of any such definition of matter. Another difference is that matter has an opposite called antimatter, antimatter has the same mass property as its normal matter counterpart. Different fields of use the term matter in different, and sometimes incompatible. Some of these ways are based on loose historical meanings, from a time there was no reason to distinguish mass from simply a quantity of matter. As such, there is no universally agreed scientific meaning of the word matter. Scientifically, the mass is well-defined, but matter can be defined in several ways. Sometimes in the field of matter is simply equated with particles that exhibit rest mass, such as quarks. However, in physics and chemistry, matter exhibits both wave-like and particle-like properties, the so-called wave–particle duality. A definition of based on its physical and chemical structure is. Such atomic matter is sometimes termed ordinary matter. As an example, deoxyribonucleic acid molecules are matter under this definition because they are made of atoms and this definition can extend to include charged atoms and molecules, so as to include plasmas and electrolytes, which are not obviously included in the atoms definition. Alternatively, one can adopt the protons, neutrons, and electrons definition, at a microscopic level, the constituent particles of matter such as protons, neutrons, and electrons obey the laws of quantum mechanics and exhibit wave–particle duality
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Heat
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In physics, heat is the amount of energy flowing from one body to another spontaneously due to their temperature difference, or by any means other than through work or the transfer of matter. Thus, energy exchanged as heat during a process changes the energy of each body by equal. The sign of the quantity of heat can indicate the direction of the transfer, for example from system A to system B, negation indicates energy flowing in the opposite direction. While heat flows spontaneously from hot to cold, it is possible to construct a heat pump or refrigeration system that does work to increase the difference in temperature between two systems, conversely, a heat engine reduces an existing temperature difference to do work on another system. Heat is a consequence of the motion of particles. When heat is transferred between two objects or systems, the energy of the object or systems particles increases, as this occurs, the arrangement between particles becomes more and more disordered. In other words, heat is related to the concept of entropy, historically, many energy units for measurement of heat have been used. The standards-based unit in the International System of Units is the joule, Heat is measured by its effect on the states of interacting bodies, for example, by the amount of ice melted or a change in temperature. The quantification of heat via the change of a body is called calorimetry. In calorimetry, sensible heat is defined with respect to a specific chosen state variable of the system, sensible heat causes a change of the temperature of the system while leaving the chosen state variable unchanged. Heat transfer that occurs at a constant system temperature but changes the state variable is called latent heat with respect to the variable, for infinitesimal changes, the total incremental heat transfer is then the sum of the latent and sensible heat. Physicist James Clerk Maxwell, in his 1871 classic Theory of Heat, was one of many who began to build on the established idea that heat has something to do with matter in motion. This was the idea put forth by Benjamin Thompson in 1798. One of Maxwells recommended books was Heat as a Mode of Motion, Maxwell outlined four stipulations for the definition of heat, It is something which may be transferred from one body to another, according to the second law of thermodynamics. It is a quantity, and so can be treated mathematically. It cannot be treated as a substance, because it may be transformed into something that is not a material substance. Heat is one of the forms of energy and this was the way of the historical pioneers of thermodynamics. Maxwell writes that convection as such is not a purely thermal phenomenon, in thermodynamics, convection in general is regarded as transport of internal energy
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Pressure
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Pressure is the force applied perpendicular to the surface of an object per unit area over which that force is distributed. Gauge pressure is the relative to the ambient pressure. Various units are used to express pressure, Pressure may also be expressed in terms of standard atmospheric pressure, the atmosphere is equal to this pressure and the torr is defined as 1⁄760 of this. Manometric units such as the centimetre of water, millimetre of mercury, Pressure is the amount of force acting per unit area. The symbol for it is p or P, the IUPAC recommendation for pressure is a lower-case p. However, upper-case P is widely used. The usage of P vs p depends upon the field in one is working, on the nearby presence of other symbols for quantities such as power and momentum. Mathematically, p = F A where, p is the pressure, F is the normal force and it relates the vector surface element with the normal force acting on it. It is incorrect to say the pressure is directed in such or such direction, the pressure, as a scalar, has no direction. The force given by the relationship to the quantity has a direction. If we change the orientation of the element, the direction of the normal force changes accordingly. Pressure is distributed to solid boundaries or across arbitrary sections of normal to these boundaries or sections at every point. It is a parameter in thermodynamics, and it is conjugate to volume. The SI unit for pressure is the pascal, equal to one newton per square metre and this name for the unit was added in 1971, before that, pressure in SI was expressed simply in newtons per square metre. Other units of pressure, such as pounds per square inch, the CGS unit of pressure is the barye, equal to 1 dyn·cm−2 or 0.1 Pa. Pressure is sometimes expressed in grams-force or kilograms-force per square centimetre, but using the names kilogram, gram, kilogram-force, or gram-force as units of force is expressly forbidden in SI. The technical atmosphere is 1 kgf/cm2, since a system under pressure has potential to perform work on its surroundings, pressure is a measure of potential energy stored per unit volume. It is therefore related to density and may be expressed in units such as joules per cubic metre. Similar pressures are given in kilopascals in most other fields, where the prefix is rarely used
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Diagenesis
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It does not include changes from weathering. It is any chemical, physical, or biological change undergone by a sediment after its initial deposition and this process excludes surface alteration and metamorphism. These changes happen at low temperatures and pressures and result in changes to the rocks original mineralogy. There is no boundary between diagenesis and metamorphism, but the latter occurs at higher temperatures and pressures than the former. Hydrothermal solutions, meteoric groundwater, porosity, permeability, solubility, after deposition, sediments are compacted as they are buried beneath successive layers of sediment and cemented by minerals that precipitate from solution. Grains of sediment, rock fragments and fossils can be replaced by other minerals during diagenesis, porosity usually decreases during diagenesis, except in rare cases such as dissolution of minerals and dolomitization. The study of diagenesis in rocks is used to understand the history they have undergone. From a commercial standpoint, such aid in assessing the likelihood of finding various economically viable mineral. The process of diagenesis is also important in the decomposition of bone tissue, the term diagenesis, literally meaning across generation, is extensively used in geology. However, this term has filtered into the field of anthropology, archaeology and paleontology to describe the changes, the composite nature of bone, comprising one-third organic and two thirds mineral renders its diagenesis more complex. Three general pathways of the diagenesis of bone have been identified, chemical deterioration of the mineral phase. They are as follows, The dissolution of collagen depends on time, temperature, at high temperatures, the rate of collagen loss will be accelerated and extreme pH can cause collagen swelling and accelerated hydrolysis. The hydrolytic activity plays a key role in the phase transformations that exposes the collagen to accelerated chemical-. Once an individual has been interred, microbial attack, the most common mechanism of bone deterioration, during this phase, most bone collagen is lost and porosity is increased. The dissolution of the mineral phase caused by low pH permits access to the collagen by extracellular microbial enzymes thus microbial attack, when animal or plant matter is buried during sedimentation, the constituent organic molecules break down due to the increase in temperature and pressure. This transformation occurs in the first few hundred meters of burial and it is generally accepted that hydrocarbons are formed by the thermal alteration of these kerogens. In this way, given certain conditions kerogens will break down to form hydrocarbons through a process known as cracking. These models have been studied and applied in real geological applications
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Oil shale
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Oil shale is an organic-rich fine-grained sedimentary rock containing kerogen from which liquid hydrocarbons called shale oil can be produced. Deposits of oil shale occur around the world, including deposits in the United States. Estimates of global deposits range from 4.8 to 5 trillion barrels of oil in place, heating oil shale to a sufficiently high temperature causes the chemical process of pyrolysis to yield a vapor. Upon cooling the vapor, the liquid shale oil—an unconventional oil—is separated from combustible oil-shale gas, Oil shale can also be burned directly in furnaces as a low-grade fuel for power generation and district heating or used as a raw material in chemical and construction-materials processing. Oil shale gains attention as an abundant source of oil whenever the price of crude oil rises. Estonia and China have well-established oil shale industries, and Brazil, Germany, general composition of oil shales constitutes inorganic matrix, bitumens, and kerogen. Oil shales differ from oil-bearing shales, shale deposits that contain petroleum that is produced from drilled wells. Examples of oil-bearing shales are the Bakken Formation, Pierre Shale, Niobrara Formation, Oil shale, an organic-rich sedimentary rock, belongs to the group of sapropel fuels. It does not have a geological definition nor a specific chemical formula. According to the petrologist Adrian C. Hutton of the University of Wollongong, oil shales are not geological nor geochemically distinctive rock and their common defining feature is low solubility in low-boiling organic solvents and generation of liquid organic products on thermal decomposition. Oil shale differs from bitumen-impregnated rocks, humic coals and carbonaceous shale, general composition of oil shales constitutes inorganic matrix, bitumens, and kerogen. While the bitumen portion of oil shales is soluble in carbon disulfide, kerogen portion is insoluble in carbon disulfide and can contain iron, vanadium, nickel, molybdenum, Oil shale contains a lower percentage of organic matter than coal. In commercial grades of oil shale the ratio of organic matter to mineral matter lies approximately between 0.75,5 and 1.5,5. At the same time, the matter in oil shale has an atomic ratio of hydrogen to carbon approximately 1.2 to 1.8 times lower than for crude oil. Some deposits contain significant fossils, Germanys Messel Pit has the status of a Unesco World Heritage Site, the mineral matter in oil shale includes various fine-grained silicates and carbonates. Inorganic matrix can contain quartz, feldspars, clays, carbonates, pyrite, geologists can classify oil shales on the basis of their composition as carbonate-rich shales, siliceous shales, or cannel shales. Another classification, known as the van Krevelen diagram, assigns kerogen types, depending on the hydrogen, carbon, the most commonly used classification of oil shales, developed between 1987 and 1991 by Adrian C. Hutton, adapts petrographic terms from coal terminology and this classification designates oil shales as terrestrial, lacustrine, or marine, based on the environment of the initial biomass deposit
