Can we make Fossil Fuels sustainable? By Stephen Millar

Transcription

1 2010 Can we make Fossil Fuels sustainable? By Stephen Millar Can we make Crude Oil sustainable? ICT Services Stevenson College Edinburgh 12/15/2010

2 Contents page 1. What are Fossil Fuels? 3 2. Advantages and Disadvantages 4 3. How can we make Black Gold into Green Gold? What is Carbon Capture? What do we have to prevent accidents 8 4. Conclusion 9 5. Bibliography 10 15/12/2010 Page 2

3 1. Introduction What are Fossil Fuels? Fossil Fuels are exactly what their name says they are. They are fuels, such as Coal and Crude Oil, which are made from the fossils of animals and plants which have died and have been buried for millions of years; however this article will focus mainly on Crude Oil. Whereas plants tend to make Coal and methane during the process called anaerobic decomposition, now extinct animal life forming Crude oil. Coal as a fuel predates recorded history, being used as early as the Bronze Age ( BC) where it was used as a composition in Funeral Pyres and has been used since then for many things; heat, melting metals and alloys, use in steam engines and more recently used to generate electricity. Crude oil, became popular in the 19 th century, is a mixture of chained hydrocarbons which can be fractionally distilled to give many different combustible compounds from short chain compounds gaseous methane and liquid petroleum and diesel to long chain hydrocarbons such as bitumen and many more in between, all of which have their uses as fuels or as a compound in making roads for the more viscous harder to burn materials or even made into plastics which we use in daily life. Though these fuels are steadily running out they still have to last us until we can find out a way that we can make a sustainable resource that is cheap, does not pollute the planet, can produce a lot of energy for the planet and is a renewable resource. 15/12/2010 Page 3

4 2. Advantages and Disadvantages Most people know about the disadvantages of using Crude Oil, that it produces harmful gases into the atmosphere when burned and it causes a lot of harm to the environment when it is spilled. I have produced a table below that will list the common and, perhaps, uncommon reasoning behind using oil. Advantages It creates a lot of jobs, for scientists and conservationists, ship workers, rig workers, petrol companies, industries that turn crude oil into petrol and gases and turn the distilled products into plastics, bitumen, waxes and other useful items. It is a necessity in daily life, in the use of plastics and material physics. Plastics are the future to lightweight materials and perhaps stronger than metals too. They are valuable now and will be in the future. Since the 1940 s, it has been used in Agriculture, increasing its productivity massively with mechanization, fertilisers and pesticides. Most pesticides and fertilisers are made from oil. Disadvantages It does cause a lot of harm when being burned, adding to the Greenhouse gases considerably, about 20 tonnes per year by America alone and with more and more countries becoming industrious this figure will likely increase unless we can do something about it When spilled in the Ocean, it gets very expensive very quickly to clean up such a disaster. It causes damage to the economy, the environment and, in some cases, the people themselves. Most of the items that can be made from oil can be made using biomass or natural gasses for fuel and we have Carbon Dioxide sequestration to stop Carbon Dioxide from entering the atmosphere. If we have the technology, why don t we use it? 15/12/2010 Page 4

5 European Figures World Wide Figures 15/12/2010 Page 5

6 3. How can we make Black Gold into Green? There are many ways we can change the way we act towards Crude Oil, and its wastes when burned. It has the potential to be carbon neutral, and we have technology to stop the greenhouse gases from being emitted, but it is not used often. There are even techniques that use the emissions and change them into more fuel! Also, we lose countless tonnes of crude oil in accidents at sea, which causes environmental damage as well as economic damage. In this report, I will go over Carbon Sequestration and ways to prevent accidents from happening less often. 3.1 Carbon Sequestration Carbon Sequestration, in industrial processes, is the capture of Carbon Dioxide from flue exhausts and storing them in underground reservoirs. There are three processes that can be used to sequest and reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, Biological, Physical and Chemical processes. Some biological processes include creating and enhancing peat bogs, which act as a natural carbon sink. In forestry, growing large areas of trees and plant life which absorb Carbon Dioxide from the air and use it as an energy source and produce oxygen which is then put back into the atmosphere. Soils, in agriculture, can be used as Carbon Sinks, which are natural or artificial reservoirs which absorb and contain carbon compounds indefinitely, can offset as much as 20% of 2010 s annual carbon emissions. Physical processes are ideas like taking bio waste, such as carbon dioxide or soot from steel and iron works, and using a process called pyrolysis which creates Bio char, a solid lump of charcoal which can be then added back into the soil and is sequested. There is also the 15/12/2010 Page 6

7 idea of injecting CO 2 into depleted oil and natural gas wells or into the deep ocean. Chemical processes can remove Carbon Dioxide from the air and turn it into stable forms of carbonate compounds. This process is exothermic so it gives out energy as well as removes carbon from the air! Theoretically, within the Earth s Crust 22% of minerals can sequest Carbon Dioxide. Large volumes of Carbon Dioxide are released in traditional cement manufacture, but a newly made cement can absorb carbon during hardening. A new process involved in this is called Co-Electrolysis which electrolyses the two compounds created when a hydrocarbon is completely burned, Carbon Dioxide and water. It is still in the testing stages, but it can take these two compounds and separate them into their elements and then combine them again into another hydrocarbon or alcohol which can be used for more fuels for energy creation. 3.2 Preventing Oil Spills and the Clean up The clean up process is a long and arduous task, taking many days or sometimes weeks before all the oil is removed and by then the damage is done, which lingers for years after. The oil spill in the Shetlands in 1992 kept fisheries closed for 11 years before they could sell their fish again. But below are some items we have in place to counter act a spill and clean up the ocean. Bioremediation is the use of micro organisms or biological agents to break down or remove oil. Controlled burning can effectively reduce the amount of oil in water, if done properly. But it can only be done in low wind, and can cause air pollution. Dispersants act as detergents, clustering around oil globules and allowing them to be carried away in the water. This improves the surface aesthetically, and mobilizes the oil, though recent research indicates that some dispersants are toxic to corals. 15/12/2010 Page 7

8 Solidifiers are composed of dry hydrophobic polymers that both adsorb and absorb. They clean up oil spills by changing the physical state of spilled oil from liquid to a semi-solid or a rubber-like material that floats on water. Solidifiers are insoluble in water, therefore the removal of the solidified oil is easy and the oil will not leach out. Solidifiers have been proven to be relatively non-toxic to aquatic and wild life and have been proven to suppress harmful vapours commonly associated with hydrocarbons such as Benzene, Xylene, Methyl Ethyl, Acetone and Naphtha. These are all good and easy methods to clean up after an Oil spill has occurred. But what would be even better would be to prevent the spills for happening completely. From making stronger ships, from stronger lightweight metals or alloys and also double hull them, to making sure that what we build our Oil Rigs from are as safe as can be and resources are spent on the right materials for use, so we can avoid another disaster like the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill in Secondary containment methods to prevent releases of oil or hydrocarbons into environment, such as drill blow out preventers and in the case of a blow out, the drill head can be detached from the shaft to act as a plug to seal what oil they can inside the reservoir. Oil Spill Prevention Containment and Countermeasures (SPCC) program by the United States Environmental Protection Agency. This agency has mandated that all Oil storage facilities should have secondary containment methods should any accident occur. Building double hulls into vessels, which reduces the risk and severity of a spill in case of a collision or grounding. Existing single-hull vessels can also be rebuilt to have a double hull, so as we put one double hull vessel out we can take in a single hull for rebuilding. The European Union has had this plan for many years now and are set to see it complete in 2015, this has been from shortly after the oil spill off the coast of the Shetlands. 15/12/2010 Page 8

9 4. Conclusion The conclusion to this report will not be that We have to use oil, there is no other way. Oil, oil, oil, natural gases, fossil fuels. etc. etc. This is because there are other ways we can get our energy, whether this is from the tides, dams, wind or the sun, there are ways in which we can power our computers and cars. However, until these methods are refined we still have to rely on fossil fuels and it can only help if we make them more environmentally friendly. If we can capture what we burn from oil and make it into more fuel to burn then why don t we? We have the technology and the ideas are out there, they just lack testing. The governments of the world should allow these tests to happen, British Petroleum and the United States didn t allow an experimental oil retrieval system for whatever reason they gave, but I ask why? It could not hurt any more than the harm already done and it was a good way to get the tests done into this material that would absorb the all the oil like a sponge and then can be put back into barrels. Why they said no, is beyond me, but if we can make aware the technology available then we can get it in use quicker and perhaps change the way the greenhouse effect is happening, perhaps even reverse it. I hope that we can develop these new technologies in new energy sources, else we may end up in a world similar to Mad Max. 15/12/2010 Page 9

10 5. Bibliography Title Picture Facts and Figures about spills and Spill prevention SPCC - Robotics in Oil Spills Popular Science Magazine General Information General Information double checked at Graph of Oil Spilled World Wide - Graph of Oil Spilled in Europe /12/2010 Page 10