Energy for Canada Flashcards
Three sources of energy we use (only these three)
- Nuclear decaying, splitting, and fusing
- Chemical bond breakage
- Thermo-mechanical: potential and kinetic energy
What is a calorie
The energy needed to heat one gram of water one degreee celsius
What is a joule
Energy to accelerate 1 kg to 1m*s^2
What is a Watt
1 Joule per second
Power =
Energy over time
Energy =
Power x time
Define bitumen
a mix of hydrocarbons from CH4 (methane) to long chained polymers. Bitumen is too viscous to flow unless heated or decomposed
Define shale fracking
The use of high temperature, pressure, and water to crack open shale and extract the natural gas contained therein
Some negative aspects of using wood for energy (4)
•-Energy per volume much lower than oil/ gas
•-Transporting wood large distances is not economical
•-Does not scale to industrial processes
•-Particulate emissions need to be scrubbed from to
reduce potential health effects
What are four things that are bad about mining for oil in the sands
- Large energy demand (>10% of product)
- Large amounts of waste sand and water
- potential to contaminate water and soil
- Carbon pollution
Benefits of hydro electric dams (2)
- easy to adjust energy production
2. very low carbon emissions
Drawbacks of dams
reservoir impacts wildlife and fish migration
Volume of flow and power vary seasonally
silt accumulates behind dam
Explain how tide power generation works
Tide rises high, water caught, tide goes down, water still caught behind barrier, flows out generating power
Wave power source
Large turbines that turn by waves pushing them
Benefits of nuclear power
\+ No green house gas emissions \+ Fuel is inexpensive and abundant \+ Good for feeding electric grid \+ Small volumes of waste produced vs other combustibles
