Psychology of women / 31.07.2020

Natural sources of energy. Natural energy sources and their use

People use various types energy for everything from our own movements to sending astronauts into space.

There are two types of energy:

ability to commit (potential)
actual work (kinetic)

Available in various forms:

heat (thermal)
light (radiant)
movement (kinetic)
electric
chemical
nuclear energy
gravitational

For example, the food that a person eats contains chemicals and the person's body stores it until he or she uses it as kinetics during work or life.

Classification of types of energy

People use resources different types: electricity in their homes, produced by burning coal, nuclear reaction or hydroelectric power station on the river. Thus, coal, nuclear and hydro are called source. When people fill their fuel tank with gasoline, the source could be petroleum or even grain growing and processing.

Energy sources are divided into two groups:

Renewable
Non-renewable

Renewable and non-renewable sources can be used as primary energy sources such as heat or used to produce secondary energy sources such as electricity.

When people use electricity in their homes, the electricity is likely created by burning coal or natural gas, a nuclear reaction or hydroelectric power plant on a river, or from several sources. People use crude oil (non-renewable) to fuel their cars, but they can also use biofuels (renewable) like ethanol, which is made from processed corn.

Renewable

There are five main renewable energy sources:

Solar
Geothermal heat inside the Earth
Wind energy
Biomass from plants
Hydropower from running water

Biomass, which includes wood, biofuels and biomass waste, is the largest source of renewable energy, accounting for about half of all renewables and about 5% of total consumption.

Non-renewable

Most of the resources currently consumed come from non-renewable sources:

Petroleum products
Liquefied hydrocarbon gas
Natural gas
Coal
Nuclear energy

Non-renewable energy accounts for about 90% of all resources used.

Does fuel consumption change over time?

Sources of energy consumed change over time, but change occurs slowly. For example, coal was once widely used as a heating fuel for homes and commercial buildings, but the specific use of coal for these purposes has declined over the past half-century.

Although the share of renewable fuels in total primary energy consumption is still relatively small, its use is growing in all sectors. In addition, the use of natural gas in the electricity sector has increased recent years because of low prices to natural gas, while the use of coal in this system has declined.

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Introduction
Why is it now, more acute than ever, that the question has arisen: what awaits humanity - energy hunger or energy abundance? Articles about the energy crisis do not leave the pages of newspapers and magazines. Because of oil, wars arise, states prosper and become poorer, and governments change. Gigantic energy programs are being developed, the implementation of which will require enormous efforts and enormous material costs.

If at the end of the last century the most common energy now - electrical - played, in general, an auxiliary and insignificant role in the world balance, then already in 1930 about 300 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity were produced in the world. The forecast is quite realistic, according to which 30 thousand billion kilowatt-hours will be produced in 2000! Gigantic numbers, unprecedented growth rates! And still there will be little energy, the need for it is growing even faster.

So why stop? Scientists and inventors have long developed numerous ways to produce energy, primarily electrical energy. Let's then build more and more power plants, and there will be as much energy as needed! This seemingly obvious solution to a complex problem turns out to be fraught with many pitfalls.

The inexorable laws of nature state that it is possible to obtain energy suitable for use only through its transformation from other forms. And the structure of the world energy economy today has developed in such a way that four out of every five kilowatts produced are obtained in principle in the same way that primitive man used to keep warm, that is, by burning fuel, or by using the chemical energy stored in it, converting it into electrical at thermal power plants. Of course, methods of burning fuel have become much more complex and advanced.

New factors - increased oil prices, the rapid development of nuclear energy, increasing requirements for environmental protection - required a new approach to energy. Unfortunately, the reserves of oil, gas, and coal are by no means endless. It took nature millions of years to create these reserves; they will be used up in hundreds of years. Today, the world has begun to seriously think about how to prevent the predatory plunder of earthly wealth. After all, only under this condition can fuel reserves last for centuries. Unfortunately, many oil-producing countries live for today. They mercilessly consume the oil reserves given to them by nature. Now many of these countries, especially in the Persian Gulf region, are literally swimming in gold, not thinking that in a few decades these reserves will dry up. What will happen then - and this will happen sooner or later, when the oil and gas fields are exhausted? Those countries that did not have their own oil and gas reserves and had to buy them became especially thoughtful then.

In the meantime, more and more scientific engineers around the world are searching for new, unconventional sources that could take on at least part of the burden of supplying humanity with energy. Researchers are looking for a solution to this problem in different ways. The most tempting, of course, is the use of eternal, renewable energy sources - the energy of flowing water and wind, ocean tides, the heat of the earth's interior, the sun.

Types of energy

In our industrial society, everything depends on energy. With its help, cars move and rockets fly into space. With its help, you can fry bread, heat your home and operate air conditioners, illuminate the streets, and take ships to sea.

They may say that energy is oil and natural gas. However, this is not true. To release the energy contained in them, they must be burned, just like gasoline, coal or firewood. The world is filled with energy that can be used to perform work of a different nature. Energy can be found in people and animals, in rocks and plants, in fossil fuels, trees and air, in rivers and lakes. However, the largest reservoirs of accumulated energy are the oceans - huge expanses of continuously moving water flows, covering about 71% of the entire earth's surface. Let's consider the main types of energy that people use for their needs. Currently this is:

· Solar energy

· Wind energy

· River energy

· Earth energy

· Ocean Energy

· Atomic energy

Let's look at them in more detail.

1.1 Solar energy

Recently, interest in the problem of using solar energy has increased sharply, and although this source is also a renewable source, the attention paid to it around the world forces us to consider its possibilities separately.

The potential of energy based on the use of direct solar radiation is extremely large.

Note that using only 0.0125% of this amount of solar energy could provide all of today's world energy needs, and using 0.5% could completely cover future needs

Unfortunately, it is unlikely that these enormous potential resources will ever be realized on a large scale. One of the most serious obstacles to such implementation is the low intensity of solar radiation. Even under the best atmospheric conditions (southern latitudes, clear skies), the solar radiation flux density is no more than 250 W/m2. Therefore, in order for solar radiation collectors to “collect” in a year the energy necessary to satisfy all the needs of humanity, they need to be placed on an area of 130,000 km2!

The need to use huge size collectors also entails significant material costs. The simplest solar radiation collector is a blackened metal (usually aluminum) sheet, inside of which there are pipes with a liquid circulating in it. Heated by solar energy absorbed by the collector, the liquid is supplied for direct use. According to calculations, the manufacture of solar radiation collectors with an area of 1 km2 requires approximately 10^4 tons of aluminum. The proven world reserves of this metal today are estimated at 1.17*10^9 tons.

From what has been written it is clear that there are various factors that limit the power of solar energy. Let's assume that in the future it will become possible to use not only aluminum, but also other materials for the manufacture of collectors. Will the situation change in this case? We will proceed from the fact that in a separate phase of energy development (after 2100), all global energy needs will be met by solar energy. Within the framework of this model, it is possible to estimate what will need to be “collected” in this case solar energy on an area from 1*10^6 to 3*10^6 km2. At the same time, the total area of arable land in the world today is 13*10^6 km2.

Solar energy is one of the most material-intensive types of energy production. Large-scale use of solar energy entails a gigantic increase in the need for materials, and, consequently, in labor resources for the extraction of raw materials, their enrichment, obtaining materials, manufacturing heliostats, collectors, other equipment, and their transportation. Calculations show that to produce 1 MW*year of electrical energy using solar energy, it will take from 10,000 to 40,000 man-hours. In traditional energy production using fossil fuels, this figure is 200-500 man-hours.

While still electrical energy, born sun rays, is much more expensive than that obtained by traditional methods. Scientists hope that the experiments they will conduct at pilot installations and stations will help solve not only technical, but also economic problems.
1.2 Wind energy.
The energy of moving air masses is enormous. Wind energy reserves are more than a hundred times greater than the hydroelectric energy reserves of all the rivers on the planet. Winds blow constantly and everywhere on earth, from a light breeze that brings welcome coolness in the summer heat to powerful hurricanes that cause incalculable damage and destruction. The ocean of air at the bottom of which we live is always restless. Why is such an abundant, accessible, and environmentally friendly source of energy so little used? Today, wind powered engines supply just one thousandth of the world's energy needs.

The technology of the 20th century opened up completely new opportunities for wind energy, the task of which was to obtain electricity. At the beginning of the century N.E. Zhukovsky developed the theory of a wind engine, on the basis of which high-performance installations could be created that could receive energy from the weakest breeze. Many designs of wind turbines have appeared that are incomparably more advanced than the old windmills. New projects use the achievements of many branches of knowledge.

Nowadays, to create the design of the wind wheel at the heart of any wind power plant, aircraft manufacturing specialists are involved, who know how to select the most appropriate blade profile and study it in a wind tunnel. Through the efforts of scientists and engineers, a wide variety of designs of modern wind turbines have been created.
1.3
River energy
For many millennia, the energy contained in flowing water has served man faithfully. Its reserves on Earth are colossal. It is not without reason that some scientists believe that it would be more correct to call our planet not Earth, but Water, because about three-quarters of the planet’s surface is covered with water. The World Ocean serves as a huge energy accumulator, absorbing most of it coming from the Sun. Waves splash here, tides ebb and flow, and powerful ocean currents arise. Mighty rivers are born, carrying huge masses of water into the seas and oceans. It is clear that humanity, in its search for energy, could not pass by such gigantic reserves. First of all, people learned to use the energy of rivers.

But when the golden age of electricity arrived, the water wheel was revived, albeit in a different guise in the form of a water turbine. Electric generators producing energy needed to be rotated, and water could do this quite successfully, especially since it already had centuries of experience.

The advantages of hydroelectric power plants are obvious: the energy supply that is constantly renewed by nature itself, ease of operation, and lack of environmental pollution. And the experience of building and operating water wheels could provide considerable assistance to hydropower engineers. However, building a dam for a large hydroelectric power station turned out to be a much more difficult task than building a small dam to turn a mill wheel. To drive powerful hydraulic turbines, a huge supply of water needs to be accumulated behind the dam. To build a dam, it is necessary to lay such a quantity of materials that the volume of the giant Egyptian pyramids will seem insignificant in comparison.

But so far only a small part of the earth's hydroelectric potential serves people. Every year, huge streams of water generated by rain and melting snow flow into the seas unused. If it were possible to delay them with the help of dams, humanity would receive an additional colossal amount of energy.
1.4
Earth energy
People have long known about the spontaneous manifestations of gigantic energy hidden in the depths of the globe. The memory of mankind preserves legends about catastrophic volcanic eruptions that killed millions human lives, which have changed the appearance of many places on Earth beyond recognition. The power of the eruption of even a relatively small volcano is colossal; it is many times greater than the power of the largest power plants created by human hands. True, there is no need to talk about the direct use of the energy of volcanic eruptions, as long as people have the ability to curb this unruly element, and, fortunately, these eruptions are quite rare events. But these are manifestations of energy hidden in the bowels of the earth, when only a tiny fraction of this inexhaustible energy finds release through the fire-breathing vents of volcanoes. The small European country of Iceland, “the land of ice,” literally translates completely self-sufficient in tomatoes, apples and even bananas! Numerous Icelandic greenhouses receive energy from the heat of the earth; there are practically no other local energy sources in Iceland. But this country is very rich in hot springs and famous geysers-fountains of hot water, bursting out of the ground with chronometer precision. And although Icelanders do not have priority in using the heat of underground sources (even the ancient Romans brought water from underground to the famous baths of the Baths of Caracalla), the inhabitants of this small northern country exploit the underground boiler house very intensively. The capital, Reykjavik, where half the country's population lives, is heated only by underground sources.

But people draw energy from the depths of the earth not only for heating. Power plants using hot underground springs have been operating for a long time. The first such power plant, still very low-power, was built in 1904 in the small Italian town of Larderello, named after the French engineer Larderelli, who back in 1827 drew up a project for using the numerous hot springs in the area. Gradually, the power of the power plant grew, more and more new units were put into operation, new sources of hot water were used, and today the power of the station has already reached an impressive value - 360 thousand kilowatts. In New Zealand, there is such a power plant in the Wairakei area, its capacity is 160 thousand kilowatts. 120 kilometers from San Francisco in the USA, a geothermal station with a capacity of 500 thousand kilowatts produces electricity.

watt.

1.5
Energy of the world's oceans
It is known that the energy reserves in the World Ocean are colossal. Thus, the thermal (internal) energy corresponding to the overheating of the surface waters of the ocean compared to the bottom waters, say, by 20 degrees, is of the order of 10^26 J. Kinetic energy ocean currents are estimated to be on the order of 10^18 J. However, so far people have been able to utilize only tiny fractions of this energy, and even then at the cost of large and slowly paying off investments, so such energy until now seemed unpromising.

However, there is a very rapid depletion of fossil fuel reserves (primarily oil and gas), the use of which is also associated with significant environmental pollution (including thermal “pollution” and an increase in the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide that threatens with climate consequences), a sharp limitation of reserves uranium (the energy use of which also generates hazardous radioactive waste) and the uncertainty of both the timing and environmental consequences of the industrial use of thermonuclear energy forces scientists and engineers to pay increasing attention to the search for opportunities for cost-effective utilization of extensive and harmless energy sources and not only changes in water levels in rivers, but also solar heat, wind and energy in the World Ocean.

The most obvious way to use ocean energy is to build tidal power plants(PES). Since 1967, at the mouth of the Rance River in France, a tidal power plant with a capacity of 240 thousand kW with an annual output of 540 thousand kWh has been operating on tides up to 13 meters high. Soviet engineer Bernstein developed convenient way construction of PES blocks towed afloat to the required locations, and calculated a cost-effective procedure for including PES in the power grid during hours of maximum load by consumers. His ideas were tested on a power plant built in 1968 in Kislaya Guba near Murmansk; A 6 million kW power plant in the Mezen Bay on the Barents Sea is waiting its turn.

An unexpected opportunity for ocean energy was growing fast-growing giant kelp algae from rafts in the ocean, which can easily be converted into methane to replace natural gas as an energy source. According to available estimates, one hectare of kelp plantations is enough to fully provide energy to each consumer.

“Oceanothermal energy conversion” (OTEC), i.e., has gained a lot of attention. generating electricity due to the temperature difference between surface and deep ocean waters sucked in by a pump, for example, when using easily evaporating liquids such as propane, freon or ammonium in a closed turbine cycle. To some extent, similar, but as it seems, probably more distant, are the prospects for obtaining electricity through the difference between salt and fresh, for example, sea and river water.

A lot of engineering has already been invested in models of electricity generators powered by sea waves, and the prospects for power plants with capacities of many thousands of kilowatts are being discussed. Giant turbines on such intense and stable ocean currents as the Gulf Stream promise even more promise.

It appears that some of the proposed ocean power plants could be implemented and become profitable today. At the same time, it should be expected that the creative enthusiasm, art and ingenuity of scientific and engineering workers will improve existing ones and create new prospects for the industrial use of the energy resources of the World Ocean. It seems that at the current pace of scientific and technological progress, significant changes in ocean energy should occur in the coming decades.

The ocean is filled with extraterrestrial energy that comes into it from space. It is available and safe, does not pollute the environment, is inexhaustible and free.

The sun's energy comes from space. It heats the air and creates winds that cause waves. It heats the ocean, which accumulates thermal energy. It sets in motion currents, which at the same time change their direction under the influence of the Earth's rotation.

The energy of solar and lunar attraction comes from space. It is the driving force of the Earth-Moon system and causes the ebb and flow of the tides. The ocean is not a flat, lifeless expanse of water, but a vast storehouse of restless energy. Here waves splash, ebbs and flows are born, currents intersect, and all this is filled with energy. Buoys and lighthouses using wave energy already dot Japan's coastal waters. For many years, the US Coast Guard's whistle buoys have been powered by wave vibrations.

Today there is hardly a coastal area that does not have its own inventor working on a device that harnesses wave energy.

Since 1966, two French cities have relied entirely on tidal power to meet their electricity needs. A power plant on the Rance River (Brittany), consisting of twenty-four reversible turbogenerators, uses this energy. The plant's output power of 240 megawatts is one of the most powerful hydroelectric power plants in France.

In the 70s, the energy situation changed. Each time suppliers in the Middle East, Africa and South America raised oil prices, tidal energy became more attractive as it competed on price with fossil fuels.

Soon after this, interest in the outlines of coastlines and the possibilities of creating power plants on them increased in the Soviet Union, South Korea and England. In these countries they began to seriously think about using the energy of tidal waves and allocate funds for scientific research in this area and plan them.

Not long ago, a group of ocean scientists drew attention to the fact that the Gulf Stream carries its waters off the coast of Florida at a speed of 5 miles per hour. The idea of using this stream of warm water was very tempting. Is this possible? Will giant turbines and underwater propellers reminiscent of windmills be able to generate electricity by drawing energy from currents and will? “They can” was the 1974 conclusion of the MacArthur Committee, under the auspices of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Miami, Florida. The general consensus was that there were some problems, but they could all be solved in in case of allocation of appropriations, since “there is nothing in this project that would exceed the capabilities of modern engineering and technological thought.”

One of the scientists most inclined to make predictions for the future predicted that electricity obtained from the use of Gulf Stream energy could become competitive as early as the 80s.

The ocean provides a wonderful environment to support life, containing nutrients, salts and other minerals. In this environment, dissolved oxygen in the water feeds all marine animals from the smallest to the largest, from amoebas to sharks. Dissolved carbon dioxide similarly supports the life of all marine plants, from single-celled diatoms to 200-300-foot (60-90 meters) brown algae. The marine biologist needs only to take one step further from seeing the ocean as a natural life support system to attempting to begin to scientific basis extract energy from this system.

With the support of the US Navy, in the mid-1970s a team of ocean scientists, marine engineers and divers created the world's first ocean energy farm, 40 feet (12 meters) below the sunlit Pacific Ocean near San Clemente. . The farm was small. In essence, all this was just an experiment. The farm grew giant California kelp.

According to project director Dr. Howard A. Wilcox of the Center for Marine and Ocean Systems Research in San Diego, California, "up to 50% of the energy from these algae could be converted into fuel - the natural gas methane. Ocean farms of the future growing brown algae "on an area of approximately 100,000 acres (40,000 hectares), will be able to provide enough energy to completely meet the needs of an American city with a population of 50,000 people."

The ocean has always been rich in the energy of waves, tides and currents. In ancient times, observing the movement of water currents, fishermen did not know anything about “tidal energy” or “kelp cultivation”, but they knew that it was easier to go out to sea at low tide and to return back at high tide. They, of course, knew that sometimes the waves hit the shore heavily and terribly, throwing stones onto its rocks, and about the “rivers of the sea” that always carried them to the necessary islands, and that they would always be able to feed themselves shellfish, crustaceans, fish and edible algae growing in the ocean. Nowadays, as the need for new types of fuel has increased, oceanographers, chemists, physicists, engineers and technologists are paying increasing attention to the ocean as a potential source of energy.

There is a huge amount of salt dissolved in the ocean. Can salinity be used as an energy source?

Maybe. The large concentration of salt in the ocean led a number of researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Colla (California) and other centers to think about creating such installations. They believe that in order to obtain large amounts of energy, it is quite possible to design batteries in which reactions would occur between salt and non-salt water.

The ocean water temperature varies from place to place. Between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, the water surface heats up to 82 degrees Fahrenheit (27 C). At a depth of 2000 feet (600 meters) the temperature drops to 35, 36, 37 or 38 degrees Fahrenheit (2-3.5 C). The question arises: is it possible to use the temperature difference to generate energy? Could a thermal power plant floating underwater produce electricity?

Yes, and it is possible.

In the distant 20s of our century, Georges Claude, a gifted, determined and very persistent French physicist, decided to explore this possibility. Having chosen a section of the ocean near the coast of Cuba, he managed, after a series of unsuccessful attempts, to obtain an installation with a capacity of 22 kilowatts. This was a great scientific achievement and was welcomed by many scientists.

By using warm water on the surface and cold water at depth and creating the appropriate technology, we have everything necessary to produce electricity, supporters of the use of ocean thermal energy assured. "We estimate that these surface waters contain energy reserves that are 10,000 times greater than global energy demand."

“Alas,” the skeptics objected, “Georges Claude received only 22 kilowatts of electricity in Matanzas Bay. Did this make a profit?” It didn’t work, because in order to get these 22 kilowatts, Claude had to spend 80 kilowatts on operating his pumps.

Today, Scripps Institution of Oceanography professor John Isaac will make the calculations more accurate. According to his estimates, modern technology will make it possible to create power plants that use temperature differences in the ocean to produce electricity, which would produce it twice as much as global consumption today. This will be electricity produced by an ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) plant.

Of course, this is an encouraging forecast, but even if it comes true, the results will not help resolve the world's energy problems. Of course, access to OTEC electricity supplies provides great opportunities, but (at least for now) electricity does not lift airplanes into the skies, propel cars, trucks, or buses, or sail ships across the seas.

However, airplanes and cars, buses and trucks can be propelled by gas, which can be extracted from water, and there is plenty of water in the seas. This gas is hydrogen, and it can be used as a fuel. Hydrogen is one of the most common elements in the Universe. In the ocean it is found in every drop of water. Remember the formula for water? The formula HOH means that a water molecule consists of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. Hydrogen extracted from water can be burned as fuel and used not only to propel various vehicles, but also to generate electricity.

A growing number of chemists and engineers are enthusiastic about the “hydrogen energy” of the future, since the resulting hydrogen is quite convenient to store: as a compressed gas in tankers or liquefied in cryogenic containers at a temperature of 423 degrees Fahrenheit (-203 C). It can also be stored in solid form after combining with an iron-titanium alloy or with magnesium to form metal hydrides. After this, they can be easily transported and used as needed.

One of the most promising of them is water electrolysis. (An electric current is passed through the water, causing chemical decomposition. Hydrogen and oxygen are released, and the liquid disappears.)

In the 1960s, NASA scientists were so successful in electrolyzing water and collecting the released hydrogen so effectively that the resulting hydrogen was used during the Apollo missions.

Thus, the ocean, which makes up 71 percent of the planet's surface, potentially contains different types of energy - wave and tidal energy; energy of chemical bonds of gases, nutrients, salts and other minerals; latent energy of hydrogen found in water molecules; the energy of currents moving calmly and endlessly in various parts of the ocean; amazing reserves of energy that can be obtained using the difference in temperature of ocean water on the surface and in the depths, and they can be converted into standard types of fuel.

Such amounts of energy and the diversity of its forms guarantee that in the future humanity will not lack it. At the same time, there is no need to depend on one or two main sources of energy, such as, for example, fossil fuels that have been in use for a long time and nuclear fuel, the methods for producing which have been developed recently.

Moreover, in millions of coastal villages and villages that currently do not have access to energy systems, it will then be possible to improve people's living conditions. Residents of those places where the sea is very rough will be able to design and use installations to convert wave energy. Those living near narrow coastal bays, where water roars in during high tides, will be able to harness this energy. For everyone else, ocean energy in open water will be converted into methane, hydrogen or electricity and then transferred to land via cable or ships.

Of course, it is difficult to even imagine a transition from such familiar, traditional types of fuel - coal, oil and natural gas - to unfamiliar, alternative methods of generating energy.

Temperature difference? Hydrogen, metal hydrides, ocean energy farms? To many this sounds like science fiction.

And yet, although the extraction of ocean energy is at an experimental stage and the process is limited and expensive, the fact remains that as scientific and technological progress develops, energy in the future may largely be obtained from the sea. When depends on how soon these processes become cheap enough. Ultimately, it comes down not to the ability to extract energy from the ocean in various forms, but to the cost of such extraction, which will determine how quickly a particular method of extraction will develop.

Whenever that time comes, the transition to ocean energy will bring double benefit: will save public funds and make the third planet of the solar system - our Earth - more viable.

The public's first hit came in 1973 with the rise in fossil fuel prices. The prices for oil, the main type of fuel in the 20th century, used in industry, agriculture, and for heating, have especially increased. Following this, there was an increase in the rate of inflation, and since scientific research and experiments also require appropriations, the search for new types of fuel raised prices even higher.

Fossil fuels are being depleted, we are forced to conserve them and increase energy supply by building nuclear reactors, which require significant financial costs and cause fears for people living nearby. Of course, energy consumption will decrease if you are more economical. In the US, which has 5.3% of the world's population and uses 35% of the world's fossil fuels and hydroelectricity, energy consumption could easily be reduced to 30-32%, or even 25%. There is even an argument that, in fairness, the United States should reduce its energy consumption to 5.3%.

Economics, however, is only one side of the story. The other side refers to developing countries that are trying to achieve a standard of living industrially developed countries, determined by the use of large amounts of energy. Today, the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America are striving to move from a society that uses mainly manual labor to a society with developed industry.

In order to satisfy the need for an equal distribution of cheap energy among all countries, an amount of energy would be required that would probably be thousands of times higher than today's consumption level, and the biosphere would no longer be able to cope with the pollution caused by the use of conventional fuels. However, Chauncey Starr, president of the Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto, California, believes: "It must be recognized that world energy consumption will develop in this direction and as quickly as political, economic and technical factors allow."

As competition for dwindling fuels intensifies, the consumption of public funds will increase. This growth will continue, as it is necessary to combat air and water pollution and the heat released during the combustion of fossil fuels.

But should we be worried about finding new sources of fossil fuels? Why debate the issue of building nuclear reactors? The ocean is filled with energy, clean, safe and inexhaustible. She is there in the ocean, just waiting to be released. And this is advantage number one.

The second advantage is that the use of ocean energy will allow the Earth to be a habitable planet in the future. But the alternative option, which involves increasing the use of organic and nuclear fuels, according to some experts, can lead to disaster: too much carbon dioxide and heat will be released into the atmosphere, which poses a mortal danger to humanity.

“No big deal,” the skeptics grin. “We are constantly improving air filters and treatment facilities. In another year or two, factory chimneys will release almost clean air. Don’t we clean car exhaust gases? Soon you will completely forget what sulfur dioxide vapors are "

However, the carbon dioxide and heat released into the atmosphere by the smokestacks of factories and other industrial plants, and sometimes by large apartment complexes that use fossil fuels, is a cause for great concern.

But who will notice that there is more carbon dioxide in the air? It is colorless and odorless. It bubbles in soft drinks. And who will notice a gradual, slow increase in the Earth's atmospheric temperature of one, two or three degrees Fahrenheit? The planet will notice when carbon dioxide after some time envelops it like a blanket, which will stop transmitting excess heat into space.

Jacques Cousteau, a pioneer in ocean exploration and exploration, believes: “When the concentration of carbon dioxide reaches a certain level, we will find ourselves as if in a greenhouse.” This means that the heat generated by the Earth will be trapped under the stratosphere. The accumulated heat will raise the overall temperature. And an increase of even one, two or three degrees Fahrenheit will cause the glaciers to melt. Millions of tons of melted ice will raise sea levels by 60 meters. Cities on the coast and in the valleys of large rivers will be flooded.

On this issue, as on many others, scientists are divided into two camps. One camp believes that a thickening blanket of carbon dioxide will cause temperatures to rise and lead to the melting of glaciers, which is, as Dr. Howard Wilcox calls it, turning the Earth into a greenhouse. The other camp believes that the same blanket will block the heat emitted by the sun, ushering in a new era of glaciation.

So what should humanity do? Will we deplete the remaining fossil fuels, build more and more nuclear reactors at the risk of changing the temperature of the atmosphere, or will we turn to the ocean - a storehouse of inexhaustible energy - and look for a way to extract this energy to achieve our goals - that is the question.

1.6 Nuclear energy.
The discovery of uranium radiation subsequently became the key to nature's energy storehouses.

The main question that immediately interested the researchers was: where does the energy of the rays emitted by uranium come from, and why is uranium always a little warmer than the environment? Was either the law of conservation of energy or the centuries-old principle of the immutability of atoms being questioned? Enormous scientific courage was required from scientists who crossed the boundaries of the usual and abandoned established ideas.

Young scientists Ernest Rutherford and Frederick Soddy turned out to be such daredevils. Two years of hard work studying radioactivity led them to a revolutionary conclusion at that time: the atoms of some elements are subject to decay, accompanied by the emission of energy in quantities that are enormous compared to the energy released during ordinary molecular modifications.

Nuclear energy is developing at an unprecedented pace today. Over thirty years, the total capacity of nuclear power units has increased from 5 thousand to 23 million kilowatts! Some scientists suggest that by the 21st century, about half of the world's electricity will be generated by nuclear power plants.

In principle, a nuclear power reactor is designed quite simply; in it, just like in a conventional boiler, water is converted into steam. To do this, they use the energy released during the chain reaction of the decay of uranium or other nuclear fuel atoms. At a nuclear power plant there is no huge steam boiler consisting of thousands of kilometers of steel tubes through which water circulates under enormous pressure, turning into steam. This colossus was replaced by a relatively small nuclear reactor.

The most common type of reactor currently is water-graphite. Another common reactor design is the so-called pressurized water reactor. In them, water not only removes heat from the fuel elements, but also serves as a neutron moderator instead of graphite. The designers increased the power of such reactors to a million kilowatts. Mighty energy units are installed at Zaporozhye, Balakovo and other nuclear power plants. Soon, reactors of this design will apparently catch up in power with the one and a half million record holder from the Ignalina NPP.

But still, the future of nuclear energy, apparently, will remain with the third type of reactor, the operating principle and design of which have been proposed by scientists - fast neutron reactors. They are also called breeder reactors. Conventional reactors use delayed neutrons, which cause a chain reaction in the rather rare isotope uranium-235, which is only about one percent of natural uranium. That is why it is necessary to build huge factories in which uranium atoms are literally sifted, selecting from them atoms of only one type of uranium-235. The rest of the uranium cannot be used in conventional reactors. The question arises: will this rare isotope of uranium be enough for any long time, or will humanity again face the problem of a shortage of energy resources?

More than thirty years ago, this problem was posed to the laboratory staff of the Institute of Physics and Energy. It was decided. The head of the laboratory, Alexander Ilyich Leypunsky, proposed the design of a fast neutron reactor. The first such installation was built in 1955.

The advantages of fast neutron reactors are obvious. In them, all reserves of natural uranium and thorium can be used to generate energy, and they are huge; more than four billion tons of uranium are dissolved in the World Ocean alone.

But all 400 nuclear power plants currently operating on the planet cannot create a threat even comparable to the threat posed by 50 thousand warheads.

There is no doubt that nuclear energy has taken a strong place in energy balance humanity. It will certainly continue to develop, without fail supplying much-needed energy to people. However, you will need additional measures to ensure the reliability of nuclear power plants and their trouble-free operation, and scientists and engineers will be able to find the necessary solutions.

Conclusion.
During the existence of our civilization, traditional energy sources have been replaced many times with new, more advanced ones. And not because the old source has been exhausted. The sun always shone and warmed man: and yet one day people tamed fire and began to burn wood. Then wood gave way to coal. Wood supplies seemed limitless, but steam engines required more high-calorie “feed.” But this was just a stage. Coal is soon losing its leadership in the energy market to oil. And here’s a new twist: today the leading types of fuel are still oil and gas. But for every new cubic meter of gas or ton of oil, you need to go further north or east, bury yourself deeper into the ground. It’s no wonder that oil and gas will cost us more and more every year.

Replacement? We need a new energy leader. They will undoubtedly be nuclear sources. Uranium reserves, if, say, we compare them with coal reserves, do not seem to be so large. But per unit weight it contains millions of times more energy than coal.

In pursuit of excess energy, man plunged deeper and deeper into the spontaneous world of natural phenomena and until some time did not really think about the consequences of his deeds and actions. But times have changed. Now, at the end of the 20th century, a new, significant stage in earthly energy begins. A “gentle” energy appeared. Built so that a person does not chop the branch on which he sits. He took care of the protection of the already severely damaged biosphere.

Undoubtedly, in the future, in parallel with the line of intensive energy development, the extensive line will also receive broad citizenship rights: dispersed energy sources of not too much power, but with high efficiency, environmentally friendly, and easy to use.

A striking example of this is the rapid start of electrochemical energy, which will later, apparently, be supplemented by solar energy.

Energy very quickly accumulates, assimilates, absorbs all the most newest ideas, inventions, scientific achievements. This is understandable: energy is literally connected with Everything, and Everything is drawn to energy and depends on it.

Therefore, energy chemistry, hydrogen energy, space power plants, energy sealed in antimatter, quarks, “black holes”, vacuum - these are just the brightest milestones, strokes, individual lines of the scenario that is being written before our eyes and which can be called Tomorrow Energy.

The story about energy can be endless, innumerable alternative forms its use, provided that we must develop effective and economical methods for this. It is not so important what your opinion is about the needs of energy, about energy sources, its quality, and cost. To us, apparently. one should only agree with what the learned sage, whose name remains unknown, said: “There are no simple solutions, there is only a reasonable choice.”

Brief description

Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………3
1. Types of energy……………………………………………………………4
1. Solar energy………………………………………………………4
2. Wind energy……………………………………………………….5
3. Energy of rivers……………………………………………………………..6
4. Energy of the earth………………………………………………………..6
5. Ocean energy……………………………………………………….7
6. Nuclear energy……………………………………………………….14

Conclusion……………………………………………………………..16

References…………………………………………………….17

Contents of the work - 2 files

watt.

Energy of the world's oceans

It is known that the energy reserves in the World Ocean are colossal. Thus, the thermal (internal) energy corresponding to the overheating of the surface waters of the ocean compared to the bottom waters, say, by 20 degrees, has a value of the order of 10^26 J. The kinetic energy of ocean currents is estimated to be of the order of 10^18 J. However, so far people have been able to utilize only tiny fractions of this energy, and even then at the cost of large and slowly paying off investments, so that such energy until now seemed unpromising.

The most obvious way to use ocean energy is to build tidal power plants (TPPs). Since 1967, at the mouth of the Rance River in France, a tidal power plant with a capacity of 240 thousand kW with an annual output of 540 thousand kWh has been operating on tides up to 13 meters high. The Soviet engineer Bernstein developed a convenient method for constructing PES blocks towed afloat to the required locations, and calculated a cost-effective procedure for including PES in the power grid during hours of maximum load by consumers. His ideas were tested on a power plant built in 1968 in Kislaya Guba near Murmansk; A 6 million kW power plant in the Mezen Bay on the Barents Sea is waiting its turn.

The ocean is filled with extraterrestrial energy that comes into it from space. It is available and safe, does not pollute the environment, is inexhaustible and free.

Today there is hardly a coastal area that does not have its own inventor working on a device that harnesses wave energy.

One of the scientists most inclined to make predictions for the future predicted that electricity obtained from the use of Gulf Stream energy could become competitive as early as the 80s.

The ocean provides a wonderful environment to support life, containing nutrients, salts and other minerals. In this environment, dissolved oxygen in the water feeds all marine animals from the smallest to the largest, from amoebas to sharks. Dissolved carbon dioxide similarly supports the life of all marine plants, from single-celled diatoms to 200-300-foot (60-90 meters) brown algae. The marine biologist needs only to take one step further from viewing the ocean as a natural life-sustaining system to attempting to scientifically extract energy from that system.

There is a huge amount of salt dissolved in the ocean. Can salinity be used as an energy source?

Yes, and it is possible.

Efficient use of energy

Although the world is not yet experiencing energy shortages, serious difficulties are possible in the coming two to three decades unless alternative energy sources become available or growth in energy consumption is curbed. The need for more rational use of energy is obvious. There are a number of proposals to increase the efficiency of energy accumulation and transportation, as well as to use it more efficiently in various industries, in transport and in everyday life.

Energy storage. The load of power plants varies throughout the day; There are also seasonal changes. The efficiency of power plants can be increased if, during periods of low energy load schedules, excess power is spent pumping water into a large reservoir. The water can then be released during peak periods, causing the pumped storage plant to generate additional electricity.

A broader application could be to use the base-mode power of a power plant to pump compressed air into underground cavities. Turbines running on compressed air would save primary energy resources during periods of increased load.

Electricity transmission. Large energy losses are associated with electricity transmission. To reduce them, the use of transmission lines and distribution networks with increased level voltage. An alternative direction is superconducting power lines. The electrical resistance of some metals drops to zero when cooled to temperatures close to absolute zero. Superconducting cables could transmit powers of up to 10,000 MW. It has been established that some ceramic materials become superconducting at very low temperatures. low temperatures, achievable using conventional refrigeration technology. This amazing discovery could lead to important innovations not only in the field of power transmission, but also in the fields of land transportation, computer technology and nuclear reactor technology.

Hydrogen as a coolant.

Hydrogen is recognized by scientists as the fuel of the future. This is due to the fact that it is fashionable to use hydrogen: in everyday life instead of natural gas, by slightly changing the distribution networks and burners; in transport as automobile fuel when modifying the carburetor.

The only drawback is that hydrogen is practically never found on Earth in free form; it is all oxidized to water. To obtain it, you can use solar energy. The installation for this realizes the dissociation of water into hydrogen and oxygen as a result of electrolysis of water (by passing an electric current through water). The efficiency of such an installation does not exceed 15-20%. Hydrogen could be transported via natural gas pipelines without much difficulty. It can also be stored in liquid form in cryogenic tanks. Hydrogen diffuses easily into some metals, such as titanium. It can be accumulated in such metals and then released by heating the metal.

Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). This is a method that allows for more efficient use of fossil energy resources. The idea is to replace the copper current windings of a conventional machine electric generator with a stream of ionized (conducting) gas. MHD generators can probably produce the greatest economic effect when burning coal. Because they have no moving mechanical parts, they can operate at very high temperatures, resulting in high efficiency. Theoretically, the efficiency of such generators can reach 50-60%, which would mean up to 20% savings compared to modern power plants using fossil fuels. In addition, MHD generators produce less waste heat. Their additional advantage is that they would pollute the atmosphere to a lesser extent with emissions of gaseous nitrogen oxides and sulfur compounds. Therefore, MHD power plants could operate on coal with a high sulfur content without polluting the environment.

Energy consumption limits. Continuous growth in energy consumption not only leads to depletion of energy resources and pollution of habitats, but can ultimately cause significant changes in the temperature and climate of the Earth.

Energy from chemical, nuclear and even geothermal sources is ultimately converted into heat. It is transmitted to the earth's atmosphere and shifts the balance towards more high temperature. At current rates of population growth and per capita energy consumption, by 2060 the temperature increase could be 1? C. This will have a noticeable effect on the climate.

Even earlier, the climate may change due to an increase in the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere produced by the combustion of fossil fuels. Conclusion

The environmental problem has confronted humanity with a choice of a further development path: should it continue to focus on limitless growth of production or should this growth be consistent with real possibilities? natural environment and the human body and is commensurate not only with the immediate, but also with the distant goals of social development.

Technological progress plays a decisive role in the emergence of today's environmental crisis. With the development of technogenic civilization, there is an increase in the risk of environmental crises and their consequences. The source of such a relationship is man himself, who is both a natural being and a bearer of technological development.

Creation of new low-waste technologies. And then, waste-free production in a closed cycle will ensure sufficient high level life without disturbing the fragile ecological balance.

And a gradual transition to alternative energy will preserve clean air, stop the catastrophic burning of atmospheric oxygen, eliminate thermal pollution of the atmosphere, thereby preserving the lives of future descendants.

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