Energy Resources
- Damanpreet Singh
Energy
• Energy consumption of a nation is usually considered as an index of its development. This is
because almost all the developmental activities are directly or indirectly dependent upon energy.
• The first form of energy technology probably was the fire, which produced heat and the early
man used it for cooking and heating purposes.
• Wind and hydropower have also been in use for the last 10,000 years.
• The invention of steam engines replaced the burning of wood by coal and coal was later
replaced to a great extent by oil.
• Now due to high prices and deficiency of oil and coal whole world is looking for some more
efficient and sustainable energy resources.
Growing Energy Needs
• Development in different sectors relies largely upon energy. Agriculture, industry, mining,
transportation, lighting, cooling and heating in buildings all need energy.
• With the demands of growing population the world is facing further energy deficit.
• The fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas which at present are supplying 95% of the
commercial energy of the world resources and are not going to last for many more years.
• Changing lifestyle of human beings is another reason for high energy needs
Sources of Energy
• A source of energy is one that can provide adequate amount of energy in a usable form
over a long period of time.
• Renewable Sources of Energy :-
Renewable Resources which can be generated continuously in nature and are inexhaustible e.g. wood, solar energy, wind
energy, tidal energy, hydropower, biomass energy, bio-fuels, geo-thermal energy and hydrogen. They are also known as
non-conventional sources of energy and they can be used again and again in an endless manner.
Non- renewable Sources of Energy:-
Non-renewable Resources which have accumulated in nature over a long span of time and cannot be quickly replenished
when exhausted e.g. coal, petroleum, natural gas and nuclear fuels like uranium and thorium.
Solar Energy
• Sun is the ultimate source of energy, directly or indirectly for all other forms of energy.
• The nuclear fusion reactions occurring inside the sun release enormous quantities of energy in the form
of heat and light.
• The solar energy received by the near earth space is approximately 1.4 kilojoules/second/m2 known as
solar constant.
• There are several techniques for harnessing solar energy. Some important solar energy harvesting
devices are solar cells, solar cookers, solar furnaces, solar water heater etc.
Solar Cooker
• Solar cookers make use of solar heat by reflecting the solar radiations using a
mirror directly on to a glass sheet which covers the black insulated box within
which the raw food is kept.
• The food cooked in solar cookers is more
nutritious due to slow heating.
• However it has the limitation that it cannot
be used at night or on cloudy days. Moreover,
the direction of the cooker has to be adjusted
according to the direction of the sun rays.
• Solar furnace: Here thousands of small plane mirrors are ar ranged in
concave reflectors, all of which collect the solar heat and produce as high a
temperature as 3000°C.
• Solar power plant: Solar energy is harnessed on a large scale by using
concave reflectors which cause boiling of water to produce steam. The steam
turbine drives a generator to produce electricity. A solar power plant (50 K
Watt capacity) has been installed at Gurgaon, Haryana.
Wind Energy
• Wind power is the use of wind energy to generate useful work. The high speed
winds have a lot of energy in them as kinetic energy due to their motion.
• Wind energy, or wind power, is created using a wind turbine, a device that
channels the power of the wind to generate electricity.
• The wind blows the blades of the turbine, which are attached to a rotor. The rotor
then spins a generator to create electricity.
• A large number of wind mills are installed in clusters called wind farms, which
feed power to the utility grid and produce a large amount of electricity.
• These farms are ideally located in coastal regions, open grasslands or hilly regions
where the winds are strong and steady.
• The minimum wind speed required for satisfactory working of a wind generator is
15 km/hr.
• The wind power potential of our country is estimated to be about 20,000 MW,
while at present we are generating about 1020 MW.
• The largest wind farm of our country is near Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu
generating 380 MW electricity.
• Wind energy is very useful as it does not cause any air pollution.
• After the initial installation cost, the wind energy is very cheap.
Hydropower
• The water flowing in a river is collected by constructing a big dam where
the water is stored and allowed to fall from a height.
• The blades of the turbine located at the bottom of the dam move with the
fast moving water which in turn rotate the generator and produces
electricity.
• The minimum height of the water falls should be 10 metres.
• The hydropower potential of India is estimated to be about 4 × 1011 KW-
hours.
• Till now we have utilized only a little more than 11% of this potential.
• Hydropower does not cause any pollution, it is renewable and
normally the hydro power projects are multi-purpose projects helping
in controlling floods, used for irrigation, navigation etc.
• Ocean tides produced by gravitational forces of sun and moon contain enormous
amounts of energy.
• A difference of several meters is required between the height of high and low tide to
spin the turbines.
• The tidal energy can be harnessed by constructing a tidal barrage.
• During high tide, the sea-water flows into the reservoir of the barrage and turns the
turbine, which in turn produces electricity by rotating the generators.
• During low tide, when the sea-level is low, the sea water stored in the barrage reservoir
flows out into the sea and again turns the turbines.
• Biomass is the organic matter produced by the plants or animals which include
wood, crop residues, cattle dung, manure, sewage, agricultural wastes etc.
• Biomass fuel is considered to be of great importance as it plays the role of a
renewable and sustainable source of energy.
• Biomass’s chemical composition includes hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen,
certain alkali atoms, alkaline earth metals and heavy metals.
• Biogas is a mixture of methane, carbon dioxide, hydrogen and hydrogen
sulphide, the major constituent being methane.
• Biogas is produced by anaerobic degradation of animal wastes in the
presence of water. Anaerobic degradation means break down of organic
matter by bacteria in the absence of oxygen.
• Biogas is a non-polluting, clean and low cost fuel.
• India has the largest cattle population in the world and has tremendous
potential for biogas production. From cattle dung alone, we can produce
biogas of a magnitude of 22,500 Mm3 annually.
There are two types of biogas plants used:-
1. Floating gas holder type biogas plant.
2. Fixed dome type biogas plant.
• This type has a well shaped digester tank which is placed under the ground and made up of
bricks.
• The gas holder can move which is controlled by a pipe and the gas outlet is regulated by a valve.
• The digester tank has a partition wall and one side of it receives the dung water mixture through
inlet pipe while the other side discharges the spent slurry through outlet pipe.
• The structure is almost similar to that of the previous type.
• However, instead of a steel gas-holder there is dome shaped roof made of
cement and bricks.
• Instead of partitioning, here there is a single unit in the main digester but it
has inlet and outlet chambers.
• Biomass can be fermented to alcohols like ethanol and methanol which can be used as fuels and are
known as biofuels.
• Ethanol can be easily produced from carbohydrate rich substances like sugarcane. It burns clean and is
non-polluting. However, as compared to petrol its calorific value is less and therefore, produces much
less heat than petrol.
• Gasohol a mixture of ethanol and gasoline is a common fuel used in Brazil and Zimbabwe for running
cars and buses. In India too gasohol is planned to be used on trial basis in some parts of the country, to
start with in Kanpur.
• Methanol is very useful since it burns at a lower temperature than diesel. Thus the bulky radiator may be
substituted by sleek designs in our cars. Methanol too is a clean, non-polluting fuel and can be easily
obtained from woody plants and ethanol from grain-based or sugar-containing plants
• As hydrogen burns in air, it combines with oxygen to form water and a
large amount of energy around 150 kilojoules per gram is released.
• Due to its highest calorific value, hydrogen can serve as an excellent fuel.
• Moreover, it is non-polluting and can be easily produced.
• Production of Hydrogen is possible by thermal dissociation, photolysis or
electrolysis of water
• By thermal dissociation of water at 3000°K or above hydrogen is produced.
• Thermochemically, hydrogen is produced by chemical reaction of water with some other
chemicals in 2-3 cycles so that we do not need the high temperatures as in direct thermal
method and ultimately H2 is produced.
• Electrolytic method dissociates water into hydrogen and oxygen by making a current
flow through it.
• Photolysis of water involves breakdown of water in the presence of sun light to release
hydrogen.
Non-Renewable Resources
• These are the fossil fuels like coal, petroleum, natural gas and nuclear fuels.
• These were formed by the decomposition of the remains of plants and
animals buried under the earth millions of years ago.
• The fuels are very precious because they have taken such a long time to be
formed and if we exhaust their reserves at such a fast rate as we have been
doing, ever since we discovered them, then very soon we will lose these
resources forever.
Coal
• Coal was formed 255-350 million years ago in the hot, damp regions of the earth during
the carboniferous age.
• The ancient plants along the banks of rivers and swamps were buried after death into the
soil and due to the heat and pressure gradually got converted into peat and coal over
millions of years of time.
• Coal is the most abundant fossil fuel in the world.
• At the present rate of usage, the coal reserves are likely to last for about 200 years.
• There are mainly three types of coal, namely anthracite (hard coal),
bituminous (Soft coal) and lignite (brown coal).
• Anthracite coal:- Also called as hard coal. It has maximum carbon (90%) and
calorific value (8700 kcal/kg.)
• Bituminous Coal:- Also called as soft coal. It contains 80% carbon in it.
• Lignite Coal:- Also named as brown coal. Contains 70% carbon content.
• When coal is burnt it produces carbon dioxide, which is a greenhouse gas
responsible for causing enhanced global warming.
• Coal also contains impurities like Sulphur and therefore as it burns the
smoke contains toxic gases like oxides of Sulphur and nitrogen.
• It is the lifeline of global economy. Petroleum is a cleaner fuel as compared to coal as it burns completely and leaves no
residue. It is also easier to transport and use. That is the reason why petroleum is preferred amongst all the fossil fuels
• At the present rate of usage, the world’s crude oil reserves are estimated to get exhausted in just 40 years.
• Crude petroleum is a complex mixture of alkane hydrocarbons. Hence it has to be purified and refined by the process of
fractional distillation, during which process different constituents separate out at different temperatures.
• We get a large variety of products from this, namely, petroleum gas, kerosene, petrol, diesel, fuel oil, lubricating oil,
paraffin wax, asphalt, plastic etc.
Liquified Petroleum Gas
• The main component of petroleum is butane, the other being propane and ethane.
• The petroleum gas is easily converted to liquid form under pressure as LPG.
• It is odourless, but the LPG in our domestic gas cylinders gives a foul smell. This is, due to
ethyl mercaptan, a foul smelling gas, added to LPG so that any leakage of LPG from the
cylinder can be detected instantaneously.
• Oil fields in India are located at Digboi (Assam), Gujarat Plains and Bombay High, offshore
areas in deltaic coasts of Godavari, Krishna, Kaveri and Mahanadi.
• Natural gas is mainly composed of methane (95%) with small amounts of propane and ethane.
• Natural gas deposits mostly accompany oil deposits because it has been formed by decomposing
remains of dead animals and plants buried under the earth.
• It is the cleanest fossil fuel and can be easily transported through pipelines.
• It has a high calorific value of about 50KJ/G and burns without any smoke.
• Natural gas is used as a domestic and industrial fuel.
• It is used as a fuel in thermal power plants for generating electricity.
• It is used as a source of hydrogen gas in fertilizer industry and as a source of carbon in tyre
industry.
• Compressed natural gas (CNG) is being used as an alternative to petrol and diesel for transport
of vehicles. CNG use reduce vehicular pollution in the city.
• Nuclear energy is known for its high destructive power as evidenced from
nuclear weapons.
• The nuclear energy can also be harnessed for providing commercial energy.
• Nuclear energy can be generated by two types of reactions:
Nuclear Fission
Nuclear Fusion
• It is the nuclear change in which nucleus of certain isotopes with large mass numbers are split
into lighter nuclei on bombardment by neutrons and a large amount of energy is released
through a chain reaction
• In order to control the rate of fission, only 1 neutron released is allowed to strike for splitting
another nucleus. Uranium-235 nuclei are most commonly used in nuclear reactors.
• Here two isotopes of a light element are forced together at extremely high temperatures
until they fuse to form a heavier nucleus releasing enormous energy in the process. It is
difficult to initiate the process but it releases more energy than nuclear fission.
• Two hydrogen-2 (Deuterium) atoms may fuse to form the nucleus of Helium at 1 billion
°C and release a huge amount of energy.
• Nuclear fusion reaction can also take place between one Hydrogen-2 (Deuterium) and one
Hydrogen-3 (Tritium) nucleus at 100 million °C forming Helium-4 nucleus, one neutron
and a huge amount of energy.
• Nuclear energy has tremendous potential but any leakage from the reactor may cause
devastating nuclear pollution. Disposal of the nuclear waste is also a big problem.
