T.patton+Oil

Oil and Renewable Energy
One of the biggest problems with modern society is that we are overly dependant on fuels derived from oil. We refine huge amounts of oil every year into gasoline for cars, jet fuel, and several other types of fuel that are used world wide. In addition to this initial problem, our need for oil grows constantly, which only adds to the demand for oil. Unfortunatly however, there is no unending supply of oil any where on Earth, which means that eventualy, being sooner rather that later, we will run out of oil. Unless we secure a renewable and reliable source of energy for homes and vehicles, our economy and our society will reach a stand still. We still have plenty of time to develop new power sources that do not rely on oil. One requirement for any new power source is that it must be environmentally friendly. One of the disadvantages of oil is that burning it is bad for the and has caused changes in the enviroment.

Ideally, a new source of energy would not involve burning fuels, but this is not entirly possible at this point in our tecnology. The best thing people can do to help the enviroment and reduce the amount of fuel they use, is to impliment more fuel efficient systems for both civil and industrial purposes. Another option is to develope more enviromentaly friendly fuels that are compatable with existing systems. Bio-fuels, for example, are good alternatives to normal fuels because they generaly burn cleaner and come from natural sources such as corn. On the other hand Bio-fuels can be rough on an engine and lead to more waste in the long run. For trucks and trains Bio-diesel is very good and because diesel engines are biult heavier and tougher than normal engines they wont ware down, and degrade in efficiency.

These are just a few of the possabilities, but even alternative power sources such as nuclear power and Hydroelectric power save oil and are beter for the enviroment. Solar and wind power are both popular alternative power sources that are implimented for commercial or home owner use due to the fact that they can save money on an electric bill.



Solar powers only downside is the lack of efficiency. It can only use certain frequencies of light and rellies on the photovoltic properties of silicon to generate electrical pressure. Because of this, they can only convert about 15-20% of the spectrom of light into electricity. Wind farms are popular mostly in the western parts of the US and in more open flat terrain where there is a lot of wind. Wind towers or windmills work by using wind to spin a turbine attached to an electric engine and a converter that together create electrical power. The up side to this alternative is that unlike solar power it works in cloudy weather, but the down side is that you need wind for the tower to generate an electric charge. Another not so small downside is the sheer size of the towers, the average tower is around 30-50 meters tall and the blades can be up to 30 meters themselves on bigger towers.



There are plenty of alternatives to the use of oil for home use, but as of yet there are few serios inovations in eliminating the use of oil for transportation. Some companies have however taken it upon themselves to create cars that require very little fuel. Chevy for instace introduced the Volt, an amazing sports car that rivals its gas guzzling counter parts in disign specs and uses only a 12 gallon tank of gas. The drive system is purely electric and uses the gas to charge the Li-ion power supply. Without gas, on a full charge, the Volt will go about 40 miles, however its range with the tank of gas is about 640 miles. The batteries can be charged by running the motor or more conveniently plugging the car int any wall outlet that supplies at least 110 volts of electricity.



If enough of the available alternatives are used the use of oil could be reduced drasticaly. This would help keep reserves of oil high and save the enviroment and the atmospher from the carbondioxide produced by burning oil. With the addition of newer inovations for home and comercial oil alternatives such as the use of Geothermal heat used to heat water and homes and the potential futer of Fussion reactors, there are plenty of wasys to reduce the amount of oil used world wide.

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