Effects of Energy on Environment

23\12\11 Shoaib Ajmal

Department of Mechanical and Avionics Engineering

Effects of Energy on Environment

Introduction
All sources of energy affect the environment in different ways. Some of the sources have greater impact than others. Environmental degradation, deforestation, desertification, pollution, depletion of natural resources and climate changes are issues of great concern for the international community caused due to entropy and excessive use of natural resources for energy generation.

Energy Significance
Energy is the strength or vitality to do work. It exists in several forms. The human society owes its growths to its ability to harness energy. Cooking dinner, heating our houses, lighting a street, keeping a hospital open, running a factory all require energy

Nature & Thermodynamics

The environmental crisis is the result of the disorder that is produced from our attempts to order nature for our comforts and needs. The second law of thermodynamics provides an insight of our environmental problems and how we ought to deal with it. According to which any increase in the order in a system will result in an even greater increase in the entropy or chaos in the environment. When a heat engine does work through the consumption of a given quantity of fuel energy, a certain quantity of heat is always released to the external environment. So if Q1 is the heat supplied, W the work produced and Q2 the heat rejected, we have

Q1 = Q 2 + W
The productivity of the engine is

W/Q1
Note that Q2 is an essential consequence of the second law of thermodynamics, which states that heat cannot be completely changed into work. The impact of an individuals activities will not have many consequences but that of a large number of individuals disorder producing activities can impact the overall eco system.

Entropy Effect
The energy processes we use are not very efficient as most of the energy is lost as heat to the environment. Heat is regarded as the ultimate death of any form of energy and the universe. It is a state in which the universe has reached a state of no thermodynamic free energy and a state of maximal entropy, and therefore can sustain no motion or life. Even small changes in the environmental temperature can have significant changes in the metabolic rate of all living things, causing serious disruption of the whole ecological balance. The increasing consumption of energy and its production is causing an increase in the entropy and the overall temperature of the atmosphere and earth, leading to significant changes in the climate of the world.

Inefficient Energy Processes

The intensity and frequency of weather extremes such as earth quakes, floods, hurricanes, heat waves, droughts and tropical cyclones have increased drastically over the recent years, all due to the disorder produced by inefficient energy processes. Diagram Explaining Impacts of Different Energy Production Processes

A quantitative illustration of the effect is provided by the SO2 production of fossil fuel power plants. The successive step-wise degradation of this component gives rise to numerous damaging effects in the environment. A 350 megawatt plant vents approximately 75 tons of SO2 per day. In sunlight SO2 yields a variety of photo chemically induced products. However, much of it is ultimately converted to H2SO4 (sulfuric acid) according to the overall reaction. H2SO4 attacks a range of other substances, including silicates, resulting in extensive economic loss. Some of these degradation processes may appear as deadly effects in organisms. In the case of pesticides these energy dissipative processes are focused, but in many other environmental contaminants they are not. A wide variety of chemical pollutants possess free energies of formation, in surplus of the raw materials from which they were obtained. This energy was purposefully acquired through the manufacturing process and is again released as the material goes to spontaneous degradation in a lower free energy state. A good example of this is provided by the native metals which release heat causing decrease in enthalpy, as they combine with oxygen. When water is used as a coolant by power plants and then returned to natural environment at a higher temperature. Then this change of temperature decreases oxygen supply thus affecting the composition of the ecosystem. In addition to thermal pollution, most energy transformation processes such as heat engines used for power generation and transportation cause air pollution. This impact on the environment can be devastating on the social, economic, and environmental systems of a country or region as well as the global ecosystem. All forms of energy production have some undesirable effects and in some cases all problems cannot be calculated in advance.

Energy Consumption

In 2010, energy consumption in the highly developed countries increased by more than 5%, after the slight decrease in 2009. This is because the fall in the energy demand in the industrialized countries in 2009 was recovered firmly in 2010. On the other hand countries like China and India had no change in their intense demand for all forms of energy. In the EU-27 countries, the energy related emissions represent almost 80% of the total GHG emission with the largest sector being the production of heat and electricity. Energy production and emission contribute to approximately 55% of the EU-27 emissions of acidifying substances, 67% of particle emission and 76% of tropospheric ozone precursors.

The consumption pattern of different energy sources for the year 2011 is given in the table below. Graph showing energy consumption pattern (in million tons oil equivalent)

Conclusion & Summary

According to a recent study, if governments around the world continue with the current policies, the total energy needs of the world would have amplified to about 55% in 2030 than in 2005, with India and China contributing the greater part of this demand. Organizations worldwide are trying to find and develop ways of generating energy through long lasting sources which have least environmental impact. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change agreed that in order to stabilize carbon dioxide, at twice the level, requires that we shrink carbon emissions to 2 giga-tonnes/year, roughly 1/4 of the current level. That will also increase the life expectancy of oil to almost 240 years and would be a good start, but the current trend is clearly in the opposite direction. The goal of the 21st century is sustainability. The dual challenge of satisfying increasing energy needs and combating climate change at the same time are urgently needed and energy research can play an essential role.

References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption http://www.whole-systems.org/oil.htm http://asecular.com/forests/vfw/energy/thermodegrad.htm www.energy.eu/publications/THAL08006ENC_002.pdf http://agneyablog.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/energy-statistics-2011-china-india-and-the-usa/ Punjab Textbook Board Physics Grade 11