Advanced Energy Technologies

Advanced energy technologies refers for utilizing existing

depletable energy resources more effectively and efficiently, and
to those that enable the transfer of energy dependence, at least
partly, on to renewable resources. Effective and efficient use of
both depletable and renewable energy resources will be
substantially aided by the availability of economical energy
storage and reconversion systems. Renewed worldwide interest in
the harnessing and utilization of renewable energy sources is
primarily attributable to:

1) issues such as air quality, global warming and acid rain:

2) the steady progress achieved in renewable energy
technologies.
3) the realization of enormous need to energize the remote
rural areas of developing countries where the only locally
available energy resources are renewable.

Technology to harness renewable energy sources fall under

two broad categories matured and emerging. Renewable energy
resources are vast. Unlike fossil fuel, they are fairly evenly
distributed around the globe. The major problem associated with
them is their dilute nature and the consequent need for high
capital intensive hardware to convert them into suitable forms.
Although the energy resources are free, their extraction is not.
Economic consideration, and the quality and type of energy
needed by the end user play crucial rules in technology
development and selection.

Alternative Energy
In recent years, alternative energy has been the subject of
intense interest and debate. The fact that average global
temperatures continue to rise year after year, the drive to find
forms of energy that will reduce humanity’s reliance on fossil
fuels, coal, and other polluting methods has naturally intensified.

While most concepts for alternative energy are not new, it has
only been in the past few decades that the issue has become
pressing. The improvements in technology and production, the
costs of most forms of alternative energy has been dropping
while efficiency has been increasing.

Alternative Energy refer to forms of energy that do not increase

humanity’s carbon footprint. In this respect, it can include things
as nuclear facilities, hydroelectric power, and even things like
natural gas and “clean coal”. It is also used to refer to what are
currently considered to be non-traditional methods of energy –
such as solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, and other recent
additions. This sort of classification rules out methods like
hydroelectric, which have been around for over a century and are
therefore quite common to certain regions of the world. Another
factor is that alternative energy sources are considered to be
“clean”, meaning that they don’t produce harmful pollutants. As
already noted, this can refer to carbon dioxide but also other
emissions like carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide,
and others. Within these parameters, nuclear energy is not
considered an alternative energy source because it produces
radioactive waste that is highly toxic and must be stored.

The term is used to refer to forms of energy that will come to

replace fossil fuels and coal as the predominant form of energy
production in the coming decades.

Types of Alternative Energy

 1. Hydroelectricity: This refers to energy generated by
hydroelectric dams, where falling water are channeled
through an apparatus to spin turbines and generate
electricity.

A nuclear power plant, releasing hot steam as a byproduct of its

slow fission process.
2. Nuclear Power: Energy that is produced through slow-
fission reactions. Rods of uranium or other radioactive
elements heat water to generate steam, which in turn spins
turbines to generate electricity.
3. Solar Power: Energy harnessed directly from the Sun,
where photovoltaic cells (usually composed of silicon
substrate, and arranged in large arrays) convert the Sun’s
rays directly into electrical energy. In some cases, the heat
produced by sunshine is harnessed to produce electricity as
well, which is known as solar-thermal power.

4. Wind Power: Energy generated by air flow, where large

wind-turbines are spun by wind to generate electricity.

5. Geothermal Power: Energy generated by heat and steam

produced by geological activity in the Earth’s crust. In most
cases, this consists of pipes being placed in the ground
 above geologically active zones to channel steam through
turbines, thus generating electricity.

6. Tidal Power: Energy generated by tidal harnesses located

around shorelines. Here, the daily changes in tides causes
water to flow back and forth through turbines, generating
electricity that is then transferred to power stations along
the shore.

7. Biomass: This refers to fuels that are derived from plants

and biological sources – i.e. ethanol, glucose, algae, fungi,
bacteria – that could replace gasoline as a fuel source.

8. Hydrogen: Energy derived from processes involving

hydrogen gas. This can include catalytic converters, where
water molecules are broken apart and reunited by
electrolysis; hydrogen fuel cells, where the gas is used to
power internal combustion engines or heated and used to
spin turbines; or nuclear fusion, where atoms of hydrogen
fuse under controlled conditions to release incredible
amounts of energy.

Alternative and Renewable Energy

In many cases, alternative sources of energy are also
renewable. However, the terms are not entirely interchangeable,
owing to the fact that many forms of alternative energy rely on a
finite resource. For instance, nuclear power relies on uranium or
other heavy elements that must be mined.

Meanwhile, wind, solar, tidal, geothermal and hydroelectric power

all rely on sources that are entirely renewable. The Sun’s rays are
the most abundant energy source of all and, while limited by
weather and diurnal patters, are perennial – and therefore
inexhaustible from an industry standpoint. Wind is also a
constant, thanks to the Earth’s rotation and pressure changes in
our atmosphere.

FUTURE PROSPECTS IN ENERGY

 Nuclear Power: The Pendulum Swings Back
Policymakers agree that the coming era's energy source
must be readily available, easy to produce,relatively cheap,
and to the extent possible, immune to international political and
military developments.It is the one of the great ironies of
technological history that in this debate the pendulum of
scientific opinion is swinging back in the direction of nuclear
power. Perhaps no energy source has been more the focus
of controversy than nuclear power.
 FUSION POWER: FUELING THE MACROINDUSTRIAL ERA
In spite of its benefits, many see nuclear fission as a
transitional energy source. By the middle of the text century, we
should have at our disposal a form of energy that will dwarf the
capabilities of even fast breeder nuclear power plants. When
science finally cracks the knowledge and technological barriers
that so far have preventedfusion from becoming the energy
source of choice, the Macroindustrial Era will finally have
the power necessary to fuel its factories fully, its spaceships,
and ultimately the entire society itself.In principle, fusion power is
the opposite of fission. Fission is based on the splitting of the
nuclei of heavy atoms, like uranium, in two. In fusion, the nuclei
of very light atoms, like hydrogen, are forced together to make
a single atom. The sun is a primary example of fusion
power generation.
Fusion is the new energy sources must be developed. Fusion
will be available as a future energy option by the middle of this
century, and should be able to acquire a significant role in
providing a sustainable, secure and safe solution and global
energy needs.
Inside the sun, fusion reactions take place at very high
temperatures and enormous gravitational pressures
Fusion is the process which powers the sun and the stars. It is
energy that makes all life on earth possible. It is called 'fusion'
because the energy is produced by fusing together light atoms,
such as hydrogen, at the extremely high pressures and
temperatures which exist at the centre of the sun (15 million ºC).
At the high temperatures experienced in the sun any gas
becomes plasma, the fourth state of matter solid, liquid and gas
being the other three. Fusion research aim is to use the
inexhaustible fuel of the sea and to reproduce on earth the power
of the sun to provide unlimited energy for the future
To produce a laboratory plasma it is necessary to free electrons
normally bound into atoms. Asufficient amount of energy supplied
to a neutral molecule will free these electrons. This
energyordinarily emanates from collisions of one sort or another.
The sun is the best example of a fusion reactor. There, the
nuclear energy is released in the fusion of hydrogen nuclei to
form helium. These reactions are too slow to be used in the
fusion reactor.

 Cold Fusion: The Message in the Bottle

In March 1989, two chemists at the University of Utah, Stanley
Pons, an American, and MartinFleischmann, a British
national, rocked the world when they rep orted that
they had performed anexperiment in which they achieved
cold fusion of hydrogen atoms in a jar on a kitchen table! When
they announced that they had actually produced energy and heat
with such simple equipment, the scientific world was
aghast.They sup p osed ly achieved fusion with tab le
top app aratus that included b attery -p owered
electrochemical cells with palladium and platinum electrodes
submerged in heavy water mixed with saltsand other
chemicals. Their experiments flew in the face of
contemp orary scientific wisd om. Now two scientists were
claiming that they fused atoms at room temperature. They were
attacked that year by the scientific establishment,
especially since they would not replicate their experiments
in public. Others, however, have corroborated their results.

ENERGY EFFIENCY

Energy efficiency simply means using less energy to perform

the same task – that is, eliminating energy waste. Energy
efficiency brings a variety of benefits: reducing greenhouse gas
emissions, reducing demand for energy imports, and lowering our
costs on a household and economy-wide level. While renewable
energy technologies also help accomplish these objectives,
improving energy efficiency is the cheapest – and often the most
immediate – way to reduce the use of fossil fuels. There are
enormous opportunities for efficiency improvements in every
sector of the economy, whether it is buildings, transportation,
industry, or energy generation.
ENERGY AND SOCIETY
The ideas of the famous Austrian biophysicist Alfred Lotka,
who proposed in the 1920s that the evolution of ecosystems is
shaped by how efficiently various species of life appropriate the
energy in the environment. In fact, general increases in human
living standards have been possible only because of substantial
increases in the amount of energy consumed. But growth in
energy consumption is not only connected with human progress.
The modern carbon-based energy system is connected with air
pollution, oil spills, and, scientists are convinced that it is the
primary human driver of global warming. By 1990, the total
energy consumption by humans around the world was 14 times
larger than it was in 1890, early in the industrial era. Growth in
energy consumption vastly outstripped population growth, which
doubled during the same time period. But, the human use of
energy-mining, refining, transportation, consumption, and
polluting by-products accounts for much of the human impact on
the environment. Earlier argued that human societies are
embedded in the biophysical environment. Most fundamentally, in
fact, they are embedded in systems of energy production and
consumption. In other words, energy mediates between
ecosystems and social systems and is a key to understanding
much about the interaction between humans and environmental
systems.

Social standing and access to technology affects energy use

by human society. Technological or social change can therefore
reduce the amount of energy used by society. Decreased energy
use does not necessarily mean decreased quality of life. In many
cases, energy conservation can improve quality of life through
reduced environmental risks, increased economic and national
security, and monetary savings.

Access to cheap, reliable energy resources has shaped the

structure of society. Since the industrial revolution, the impacts of
fossil fuels, burned to produce energy, have further defined social
structure. Poor communities often accept dirty energy facilities
because these facilities also provide much-needed jobs. This has
lead to groups of people being marginalized socially,
environmentally and physically. As impacts once thought to be
confined to these marginalized communities are now being
realized by the global community, the need to move to clean,
reliable, cheap sources of energy has become paramount.