Technical Paper Presentation On

Presented By

Harish Kumar G(04J81A0211) Harinath K(05J85A0202)

Branch : EEE Branch : EEE

Year : III / IV Year : III / IV

Harish_h1h2@yahoo.co.in Hari_indian2001@yahoo.co.in

C hevella-501503

Non C onventional Energy Sources

Abstract:

The Industrial Revolution of the 19 th century ushered in new technologies. The spurt in inventions in that
century was unprecedented in many ways. Some of these inventions involved use of natural resources like
coal and oil. The thought of exhaustible nature of these resources and the environmental damage from the
use of these resources never occurred either to the inventors or the subsequent generations. On the quest
to sustain galloping economic activity, the dependence on coal and oil has soared at a phenomenal rate
over the years. The burnt fuels result in the release of carbon dioxide and other gases into the atmosphere
causing environmental damage. It has become imperative to look at energy technology with a new
perspective. There are abundant renewable sources of energy such as wind, sun, water, sea, biomass
apart from even daily wastes. These sources are pollution free and hence clean energy apart from being
unlimited inexhaustible. In this paper we explained the need for Non-C onventional Energy, different types
of Non-C onventional Energy like Solar, Hydel, Wind, Geothermal…energies and different technologies using
these energies.

Introduction:

Without energy, the world's entire industrialized infrastructure would collapse; agriculture, transportation,
waste collection, information technology, communications and much of the prerequisites that a developed
nation takes for granted. A shortage of the energy needed to sustain this infrastructure could lead to a
Malthusian catastrophe. Future energy development faces great challenges due to an increasing world
population, demands for higher standards of living, and demands for less pollution and a much-discussed
end to fossil fuels.

Need for Non-Conventional Energy:

Most human energy sources today use energy from sunlight, in the form of fossil fuels (coal, oil and
gases). Fossil fuels supply most of the energy consumed today. They are relatively concentrated and pure
energy source, and technically easy to exploit, and provide cheap energy if the cost of pollution and
subsidies are ignored. Petroleum products provide almost all of the world's transportation fuel. Pollution is
a large problem. Fossil fuels contribute to global warning and acid rain. The use of fossil fuels, mainly coal,
causes tens of thousands of deaths each year from ailments like respiratory disease, cardiovascular
disease, and cancer. Both derivatives from the hydro carbon fuel itself like carbon dioxide and impurities
like heavy metals, sulphur, and uranium contribute to the pollution.

Once the stored forms are used up, then the long-term energy usage of humanity is limited to that from
the sunlight falling on Earth. The total energy consumption of humanity today is equivalent to about 0.1-
0.01% of that. But humanity cannot exploit most of this energy since it also provides the energy for almost
all other life forms and drives the weather cycle. To overcome these problems (scarcity of fossil fuels and
pollution), Non-C onventional (Renewable)

Sources of energy are preferred.

Renewable energy (Non-C onventional Energy) is defined as “energy derived from resources that are
regenerative or for all practical purposes can not be depleted.”[1] Renewable energy sources contribute
approximately 29.3% of human energy use worldwide.

Non-Conventional Energy Sources:

Mass production of energy from non-conventional sources requires technology that harnesses the power of
natural phenomena such as sunlight, wind, tides and geothermal heat. Each of these sources has unique
characteristics which influence how and where they are used. These sources are broadly classified into:

• Solar Energy

• Hydel Energy

• Wind Energy

• Geothermal Energy

• Biofuels

• Fuel cells

Solar Energy:

Solar power is the technology of obtaining usable energy from the light of the sun. Solar energy has been
used in many traditional technologies for centuries and has come into widespread use where other power
supplies are absent, such as in remote locations and in space.

Solar energy is currently used in a number of applications:

l Heat(hot water, building heat, cooking)

l Electricity generation(photovoltaics, heat engines)

l Desalination of seawater

Its application is spreading as the environmental costs and limited supply of other power sources such as
fossil fuels are realized.

Many technologies have been developed to make use of solar radiation. Some of these technologies make
direct use of the solar energy ( e.g. to provide light, heat, etc.), while other produce electricity

Solar design in architecture:

Solar design in architecture involves the use of appropriate solar technologies to maintain a building's
environment at a comfortable temperature through the sun's daily and annual cycles. It may do this by
storing solar energy as heat in the walls of a building, which then acts to heat the building at night .Another
approach is to keep the interior cool during a hot day by designing in natural convection through the
building's interior.

Solar updraft tower:

A solar updraft tower (also known as solar chimney, but this term is avoided by many proponents due to
its association with fossil fuels) is a relatively low-tech solar thermal power plant where air passes under a
very large agricultural glass house (between 2 & 8 km in diameter)., is heated by the sun and channeled
upwards towards a convection tower. It then rises naturally and is used to drive turbines, which generate
electricity.

Energy tower:

An energy tower is an alternative proposal to the updraft tower. It is driven by spraying water at the top of
the tower, evaporation of water causes a downdraft by cooling the air thereby increasing its density,
driving wind turbines at the bottom of the tower. It requires a hot arid climate and large quantities of water
(seawater may be used) but does not require the large glass houses of the solar updraft tower.

Apart from these, solar energy is now –a-days mostly used in Solar heating systems, Solar cooking, Solar
lighting, Photovoltaics, Solar thermal electric power plants. The principles of above technologies are
already known to us.

Limitations:

l Solar cells produce DC which must be converted to AC when in currently existing distribution grids.
This incurs an energy loss of 4-12%.

l To get enough energy for larger applications, a large number of photovoltaic cells is needed. This
increases the cost of the technology and requires a large plot of land.

l Like electricity from nuclear or fossil furl plants, it can only realistically be used to power transport
vehicles by converting light energy into another form of stored energy (e.g. battery stored
electricity or by electrolyzing water to produce hydrogen ) suitable for transport.

Hydel Energy:

Energy in water (in the form of motive energy or temperature differences) can be harnessed and used.
Since water is about a thousand times denser than air, even a slow flowing stream of water, or moderate
sea swell, can yield considerable amounts of energy. Hydroelectric power now supplies about 715,000 MWE
or19% of world electricity.

There are many forms of water energy:

l Hydroelectric energy is a term usually reserved for hydroelectric dams.

l Tidal power captures energy from the tides in a vertical direction. Tides come in, raise water
levels on a basin, and tides roll out. Around low tide, the water in the basin is discharged through a
turbine.

l Tidal stream power captures energy from the flow of tides, usually using underwater plant
resembling a small wind turbine.

l Wave power uses the energy in waves. The waves will usually make large pontoons go up and
down in the water, leaving an area with reduced wave height in the “shadow”.
l Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) uses the temperature difference between the
warmer surface of the ocean and the colder lower recesses. To this end, it employs a cyclic heat
engine.

l Deep lake water cooling although not technically an energy generation method can save a lot of
energy in summer. It uses submerged pipes as a sink for climate control systems. Lake-bottom
water is a year-round local constant of about 4 o c.

l Blue energy is the reverse of desalination. A difference in salt concentration exists between
seawater and ricer water. This gradient can be utilized to generate electricity by separating positive
and negative ions by ion-specific membranes. Brackish water is produced. This form of energy is in
research; costs are not the issue, and tests on pollution of the membrane are in progress.

Limitations:

l Building a dam often involves flooding large areas of land, which can change habitats immensely,
with risks to wildlife.

l The reservoir created for hydroelectric dams may initially produce significant amounts of carbon
dioxide and methane from rotting vegetation. Once this vegetation is gone, no additional
greenhouse gases are produced. In some cases they may produce more of these greenhouse gases
than power plants running on fossil fuels. They also affect water quality, creating large amounts of
stagnant water without oxygen in the reservoir, and excessive air bubbles in the water downstream
from the dam, both of which impact aquatic life.

Wind Energy:

Wind energy is the conversion of wind energy into more useful forms, usually electricity using wind
turbines. The origin of wind is simple. The earth is unevenly heated by the sun resulting in the poles
receiving less energy from the sun than the equator does. Also the dry land heats up (and cools down)
more quickly than the seas do. The differential heating powers a global atmospheric convection system
reaching from the Earth's surface to the stratosphere which acts as a virtual ceiling.

Wind turbines transform the energy in the wind into mechanical power, which can then be
used directly for grinding etc. or further converting to electric power to generate electricity.
Wind turbines can be used singly or in clutters called ‘wind farms'. Small wind turbines called
aero-generators can be used to charge large batteries.

An estimated 1% to3% of energy from the sun that hits the earth is converted into wind energy. Most of
this wind energy can be found at high attitudes where continuous wind spread over 150km/h(100mph)
occur. Eventually, the wind energy is converted through friction into diffuse heat throughout the Earth's
surface and atmosphere.

In 2005, worldwide capacity of wind powered generators was megawatts; it currently produces less than
1% of worldwide electricity use. Five nations-Germany, Spain , USA , India and Denmark-account for 80%
of the worlds installed wind energy capacity. Wind power installed capacity reaching 53,031 MW. India
ranks 4 th in the world with a total wind power capacity of 6,053MW. Wind power generates 3% of all
electricity produced in India .

Limitations:

l A key issue debated about wind power is its ability to scale to meet a substantial portion of the
world's energy demand. There are significant economic, technical and ecological issues about the
large-scale use of wind power that may limit its ability to replace other forms of energy production.

l Electrically generated from wind power can be highly variable at several different timescales: from
hour to hour, daily and seasonally. Annual variation also exists, but is not as significant. This
variability can present substantial challenges to incorporating large amounts of wind power into a
grid system, since to maintain grid stability, energy supply and demand must remain in balance.

Geothermal Energy:

Geothermal power is the use of geothermal heat to generate electricity. Ultimately, this energy derives
from the radioactive decay in the core of the Earth, which heats the Earth from the inside out. It is often
referred to as a form of energy, but because the heat at any location can eventually be depleted it
technically may not be strictly renewable.

Three types of power plants are used to generate power from geothermal energy: dry steam, flash, and
binary. Dry steam plants take steam out of fractures in the ground and use it to directly drive a turbine
that spins a generator. Flash plants take hot water, usually at temperatures over 200 c, out of the ground,
and allows it to boil as it rises to the surface then separates the steam phase in steam/water separators
and then runs the steam through a turbine. In binary plants, the hot water flows through heat exchangers,
boiling an organic fluid that spins the turbine. The condensed steam and remaining geothermal fluid from
all three types of plants are injected back into the hot rock to pick up more heat. This is why geothermal
energy is views as sustainable. The heat of the earth is so vast that there is no way to remove more than a
small fraction even if most of the world's energy needs came from geothermal sources.

Geothermal-generated electricity was first produced at Larderello , Italy , in 1904. Since then, the use of
geothermal energy for electricity has grown worldwide to about 8,000 megawatts. Geothermal power is
generated in over 20 countries around the world including Iceland (producing 17% of its electricity from
geothermal sources), the United States , Italy , France , New Zealand . Mexico , Nicaragua , C osta Rica ,
Russia , the Philippines , Indonesia , the People's Republic of C hina and Japan .

Biofuel:

Biofuel is any fuel that is derived from biomass- recently living organisms or their metabolic byproducts,
such as manure from cows. It is a renewable energy source, unlike other natural resources such as
petroleum, coal, and nuclear fuels. One definition of biofuel is any fuel with an 80% minimum content by
volume of materials derived from living organisms harvested within the ten years preceding its
manufacture. Like coal and petroleum, biomass is a form of stored solar energy. The energy of the sun is
“captured” through the process of photosynthesis in growing plants. One advantage of biofuel in
comparison to most other fuel types is it is biodegradable, and thus relatively harmless to the environment
if spilled.

The biofuels are in the three forms i.e. gaseous, liquid and solid forms. They are mainly used in transport,
generation of electricity etc. There are some criticisms on biofuels like:

• Due to rising demand for biofuels, production of food is reduced resulting in rising food prices

• The energy efficiency of biofuels is not known and some of them is even negative.

Fuelcells:

Fuel cells are electrochemical devices that convert the chemical energy of a fuel directly and very
efficiently into electricity (DC ) and heat, thus doing away with combustion. The most suitable fuel for such
cells is hydrogen or a mixture of compounds containing hydrogen. A fuel cell consists of an electrolyte
sandwiched between two electrodes. Oxygen passes over one electrode and hydrogen over the other, and
they react electrochemically to generate electricity, water, and heat.

Conclusion:

The energy of the future is Non-C onventional energy since the C onventional cannot support the rising need
for energy of the world (The estimated demand for energy is shown in figure below- The demand for
energy is growing rapidly in developing nations like India , C hina ..Etc). At the current rate it may get
exhausted in a few more years. However, the renewable energy may also not support the energy needs
for a long time since the current technology is not sufficient to get the required energy efficiently. Hence,
the best solution for this problem is to conserve the current energy and to develop technologies to get
sufficient energy efficiently from the Non-C onventional sources.

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