Energy Flashcards
What is global warming?
Climate change refers to long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns. These shifts may be natural, but since the 1800s, human activities have been the main driver of climate change, primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels (like coal, oil, and gas) which produces heat-trapping gases.
What is the greenhouse effect?
The greenhouse effect is a process that occurs when energy from a planet’s host star goes through its atmosphere and warms the planet’s surface, but the atmosphere prevents the heat from returning directly to space, resulting in a warmer planet.
What are greenhouse emissions?
A greenhouse gas is a gas that absorbs and emits radiant energy within the thermal infrared range, causing the greenhouse effect. The primary greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere are water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone.
What are fossil fuels?
Fossil fuels are made from decomposing plants and animals. These fuels are found in the Earth’s crust and contain carbon and hydrogen, which can be burned for energy. Coal, oil, and natural gas are examples of fossil fuels.
How is coal responsible for generating electricity?
Coal is primarily used as fuel to generate electric power in the United States. In coal-fired power plants, bituminous coal, subbituminous coal, or lignite is burned. The heat produced by the combustion of the coal is used to convert water into high-pressure steam, which drives a turbine, which produces electricity.
What is electricity?
Electricity is a secondary energy source that we get from the conversion of other sources of energy such as coal, natural gas, oil, nuclear power, and so on. These sources are known as “primary sources.” Primary sources can be renewable or non-renewable, but the electricity itself is neither.
What is energy?
Energy is defined as the ability to do work. Energy can be found in many things and can take different forms. For example, kinetic energy is the energy of motion, and potential energy is energy due to an object’s position or structure. Energy is never lost, but it can be converted from one form to another.
What is renewable energy?
energy from a source that is not depleted when used, such as wind or solar power.
What is nuclear energy?
Nuclear energy is the energy in the nucleus, or core, of an atom. Atoms are tiny units that make up all matter in the universe, and energy is what holds the nucleus together. There is a huge amount of energy in an atom’s dense nucleus.
What is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve?
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is an emergency stockpile of petroleum maintained by the United States Department of Energy. It is the largest known emergency supply in the world, and its underground tanks in Louisiana and Texas have capacity for 714 million barrels.
What is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve?
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is an emergency stockpile of petroleum maintained by the United States Department of Energy. It is the largest known emergency supply in the world, and its underground tanks in Louisiana and Texas have capacity for 714 million barrels.
What is an oil refinery?
An oil refinery or petroleum refinery is an industrial process plant where petroleum (crude oil) is transformed and refined into useful products such as gasoline (petrol), diesel fuel, asphalt base, fuel oils, heating oil, kerosene, liquefied petroleum gas and petroleum naphtha.
What is refinery conversion?
Conversion process units are used to convert one hydrocarbon stream into another by changing molecule size and structure. The objective is to shift the yield of the refinery away from less valuable products (e.g., residual fuel oil, LPG) and toward more valuable ones (e.g., gasoline, diesel).
Enumerate the types of oil
There are six types of crude oil: light/sweet, light/sour, medium/sweet, medium/sour, heavy/sweet, and heavy/sour. each type of crude oil serves a particular market, and each fetches a different price. Heavy oil. Light oil. Sweet or sour oil.
What is Petroleum?
Petroleum is a broad category that includes both crude oil and petroleum refined products. The terms oil and petroleum are sometimes used interchangeably.
Why does the U.S. import oil from other countries?
because American refineries are often set up to process types of oil that are different from those produced in the United States.
It would be expensive and difficult to reconfigure refineries to process more U.S. oil, which is why the United States is likely to continue importing large quantities even if it were to produce more domestically. The United States also uses much more oil than it produces.
What type of oil are U.S. refineries configured to utilize?
Heavy crude oil.
How does the weight of crude oil affect its ability to be refined?
The weight of oil defines how easy it is to refine, or break down into its usable component parts, such as gasoline, jet fuel and diesel. Light crude is the easiest to handle, heavy is the most difficult, with intermediate obviously somewhere in between.
Which type of oil is the cheaper variant; heavy or light?
Heavy crude oils are less expensive for a refinery to purchase but more expensive to refine, since they have greater costs from higher energy inputs and additional processing to meet environmental requirements.
Fracking
the process of injecting liquid at high pressure into subterranean rocks, boreholes, etc. so as to force open existing fissures and extract oil or gas.
Why might oil companies possess the disincentive to drill?
Because of the understanding that there had existed two major oil price drops in the past 8 years and the conviction that a 3rd is inevitable
The realization that there exists an environmental transitioning to renewable energy that will exercise adverse ramifications over their profits
Reasons for high gas prices;
Oil supply chain disruptions attributable to Covid-19
Russian invasion of Ukraine
Oil companies capitalizing on the higher costs of oil in EU and exporting oil overseas, limiting the supply of domestic oil for U.S.
The reductionism in the production of oil for many reasons
When are fossil fuels burned?
Fossil fuels may be burned to provide heat for use directly (such as for cooking or heating), to power engines (such as internal combustion engines in motor vehicles), or to generate electricity. Some fossil fuels are refined into derivatives such as kerosene, gasoline and propane before burning.
What are some of the consequences of climate change?
The consequences of climate change now include, among others, intense droughts, water scarcity, severe fires, rising sea levels, flooding, melting polar ice, catastrophic storms and declining biodiversity.
