StudyGuideF2011.docx

Intro lecture Commoner?s four laws Climate change: understand increase in T and CO2 Principle greenhouse effect Processes that contribute to increase/decrease of CO2 in atmosphere Major fluxes and reservoirs of carbon in the environment What is the stabilization triangle / wedge? Know as many of the different ?wedges? as possible, including quantification (i.e., not just ?make cars more fuel efficient?, but ?double the fuel efficiency of 2 billion cars (that?s more than there are right now in the world!) from 30 to 60 miles/gallon? Understand why the American way of doing biofuels is neither carbon neutral, hardly saves any carbon released into the environment at all. Lecture on types of energy: carbon reductions that save/cost money What is energy, force, power, what units are used for each of them. understand gravitational force, friction, acceleration. Be able to convert potential energy into kinetic energy (if there was no friction, what velocity would you have rolling down a hill with 20m relief)? What is thermal energy, what is a calorie: how many calories/joules are necessary to melt ice, heat up water from 0 to 100 ?C, evaporate a kg of water? What is a mol? Relationship between eV, joule, kWhr, calorie, BTU, QUAD, kilo/mega/giga/tera/exa/zetta(joule, watt) What is the equation for the combustion of methane, the photosynthesis of CO2 and water to methane and oxygen? What type of energy conversions takes place in power plants? What types of energies do you know and try to understand the conversions that I put in red squares on slide. What are the general ideas of 1st and 2nd law of thermodynamics? What is the connection between voltage, current and wattage? Understand voltage and wattage with river analogy. Understand examples of megawatt, gigawatt, terawatt? Important numbers: total world ?wattage? (power usage), global energy consumption/year (US share of this?)? What are approximate percentages of different sources for primary energy consumption in US, approximate percentages of consumers (mind that the units in the figure is in quads, how many quads in total?); how much energy is lost (friction, heat)? Energy flow What is exergy ? units? Have a rough idea on sources of global exergy fluxes, their orders of magnitude and which ones we are able to capture to what degree. How much energy is transported by the gulf stream per given time unit ? is that a force, energy, power? Which types of energy from the earth (conventional, alternative) are originally from the sun, other celestial bodies, earth thermal, Earth nuclear? What are the three major types of energy of the world?s primary energy consumption, what are # 4 and 5? What are the three major types of energy of the world?s electricity generation, what are # 4 and 5? Why are the percentages for different types of energy different for the last two questions? What is the energy use per capita in the US vs. France? Why are these values expressed as a power unit (W)? Have the energy expenditures gone up or down (measured in % of gross national product) in the US since 1970? What are the approximate percentages of end-use sectors (residential, commercial, industrial transportation)? Oil How many millions of barrels per day is the petroleum consumption in the US and in the world? When was the peak of the US oil production? What is the chemical formula of methane, propane, octane? (which of these are gases, liquids) What is the mass of 1 mol methane? What is a mol? How much energy is stored in 1 mol C-H bonds and in 1 mol C=O bonds (why do you think is the latter amount higher)? What is naphthalene and what is it used for? Chemically speaking, natural gas is, for the most part, ?? The precursor of oil is trees, plankton, whales? How is the chemistry of trees and plankton different? Why is upwelling water promoting algae blooms? What is the type of rock called that forms when plankton sinks to the bottom of the ocean? What are the transformation conditions for kerogen -> oil -> gas? what are diagenesis, catagenesis, metagenesis? What are the source rock, reservoir rock, cap rock and trap (anticline, fault, salt dome ?) and what conditions do they have to fulfill? We are ?harvesting? the oil now, but how long ago did the original plankton form? What are oil seeps? Major method used for petroleum exploration? What are the mechanisms that cause the pressure driving the oil in the primary and secondary recovery phase, respectively? What is the purpose of oil refinery and what fractions do we get as a result of it? How does refining work and what type of cracking mechanisms do we have? Who is Hubbert and what do Hubbert curves for oil describe? Has his prediction come true? What are the approximate lifetimes for oil, nat. gas, and coal? Which countries have the largest oil reserves in the world? What are ways to deal with oil spills? What are the two major ways to transport oil over long distances? Nuclear What was one of the major reason for why people talked about nuclear energy again? Approximately how many nuclear power plants are in the world/US What is the approx. power of a full-size nuclear reactor? Why did the US nuclear energy peak in 1990 even though no new licenses were given out since the Three-Mile Island event in the late seventies? When you see the costs of energy forms / MWh, what is typically included in the price what not? Which country produces the highest percentage of its electricity from nuclear power, which one the least, and what percentage in the US? Do you know any other product that contains uranium? What happens during nuclear fission? What isotope of U is typically used for nuclear fission? What is alpha, beta, and gamma radiation? (change in No of protons, neutrons, mass; how far can they penetrate)? What are moderators, what moderators do you know and which ones are the most commonly used ones? What is nuclear fission/fusion ? why is the latter so difficult to do? Know some details of the processes of mining/milling/making yellow cake/making hexafluoride, enrichment, making pellets, inclosing them in zirconia ceramics What are the percentages of different types of energy on the world?s primary energy consumption How is that different in terms of electricity production What are typical fission products? What do we need ultracentrifuges for? How do you decrease the amount of nuclear reaction going on in a fuel rod? Who are the world?s biggest two U producers? What are the massive towers for that we see in each power plant? What are boiling water/pressurized water reactors? What two oxidation states of U do you know and name some characteristic compounds and environmental behavior of each of them? What is the difference between the open and closed nuclear fuel cycle? What types of nuclear waste contribute to the overall radioactive waste? What was the envisaged nuclear waste site in the US? What is the situation today in terms of terminal nuclear waste repositories? Alternative energies What types of alternative energies do you know What are guidelines for energy considerations of the future given in the lecture? What are the pros and cons for wind, solar, biofuels? What are the four types of solar energy discussed in class?