Chapter #16 Guided Reading
- Nonrenewable alternative energy
Geothermal= heat is extracted faster than it is replenished
- Renewable energy sources
- Passive Solar Energy promotes cooling in hot weather and retaining heat in cold weather
- Methods of Passive Solar Energy
- Overhangs that block summer sun but allow winter sun
- Walls in building that absorbs heat during the day and releases it at night
- Deciduous trees as landscaping
- Active Solar= energy systems that require mechanical power
Additional pumps move heat to location when energy is converted and used
- Solar collectors provide space heating or hot water
- Photovaltaic converts sunlight directly into electricity
- Solar Thermal Generators focus sunlight onto water-holding containers
- Solar energy and the environment
One concern is the variety of metals, glass plastics, and fluids used in the manufacture and use of solar equipment
Production and accidental spills could release toxic materials
- Hydrogen Fuel, hydrogen as power for fuel cells
- Water Power is a form of stored solar energy
- Small-scale systems are electrical power produced by large dams that will not increase
- Most dam sites already utilized
- Small scale systems have potential in mountainous areas along streams
- Water Power and the Environment:
-Water power is clean and efficient power
-No burning of fuel, no radioactive waster
CONS=
-Flood large tracts of land
-Block fish migration
-Trap sediment that would replenish beaches
Evaporate loss of water from reservoirs
- Ocean Energy= high energy in motion of waves, currents and tides in the ocean
- Tidal Power= dam built across the entrance to a bay or estuary
- Wind Power= wind produced when differential heating of Earth's surface create air masses with differing heat contents and densitites
- Wind energy is the cheapest form of alternative energy
- There are three groups that energy recovered from biomass-organic matter:
- Firewood
- Organic wastes
- Crops grown to be converted into liquid fuels
- Biofuels can pollute the air and degrade the land
- Combustion of biomass-derived fuel generally release fewer pollutants then combustion of coal/gasoline
- Most ground water can be considered a source of geothermal energy
- Geothermal can produce 10% of the electricity needed for the wester US