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 MartinF l e i s c h m a n n , a B r i t i s h n a t i o n a l , r o c k e d t h e w o r l d w h e n t h e y
r e p o r t e d t h a t t h e y h a d p e r f o r m e d a n experiment 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.T h e y s u p p o s e d l y a c h i e v e d f u s i o n w i t h t a b l e
t o p a p p a r a t u s t h a t i n c l u d e d b a t t e r y - p o w e r e d electrochemical cells with
palladium and platinum electrodes submerged in heavy water mixed with saltsand
other chemicals. T h e i r e x p e r i m e n t s f l e w i n t h e f a c e o f c o n t e m p o r a r y
s c i e n t i f i c w i s d o m . N o w t w o 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.