Cleaner Than Coal?

By Author: Dave Sabri
Total Articles: 29
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Most of the electricity produced in the world today is produced by dirty, polluting coal-fired power plants, for the simple reason that this remains the cheapest way of producing electricity on a large scale. There are, however, other ways in which it can be produced:

Although it still produces the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide when it is burned, and is a dwindling resource, natural gas is by far the most environmentally friendly of all the fossil fuels used in power stations, and the fact that it produces no soot when burned means that the combustion products can be used to help turn the steam turbine, making it also by far the most efficient.

Although it is more commonly used as automobile fuel, petrol can also be used to heat water into the steam that turns a turbine. However, it is residual fuel oil, which is what is left over when crude oil has been refined into saleable products such as gas, automobile and aviation fuel, and plastic, that is used, as this can be purchased comparatively cheaply.

At present, the biggest non-fossil fuel source of energy for electricity generation is nuclear fission. In ...
... a nuclear power plant, a nuclear fuel such as uranium is bombarded with neutrons, splitting the atoms in the fuel and setting of a controlled chain reaction which releases a huge amount of heat energy. This heat is used to turn water into steam which turns the turbine in the same way as in a fossil fuel based power plant.

The kinetic energy in a flowing river or the outlet from a dam is what spins the turbines in Hydro Power stations. Although they are completely non-polluting and totally renewable, they have quite a detrimental effect on river ecosystems, and often run into planning difficulties as a result.

The hot rocks bubbling away beneath the apparently solid ground provide a potentially limitless source of heat for electricity generation, although at the moment the technology used by Geothermal power stations can only really be used in places where these geothermal rocks are close to the surface, and natural hot springs abound.

Photovoltaic cells, also known as solar panels, can trap the energy in the suns solar rays and turn it into electricity. The heat from the sun can also be focussed using special lenses to heat water for steam turbines in a process known as solar thermal generation.

Many people believe that the future of electricity generation, certainly in the UK, could lie with Wind Power, which uses the motion of a windmill to drive an electricity-producing dynamo. They are, unfortunately, rather intermittent, due to their dependence on weather conditions for their output.

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