Radioactive by-products that result from the nuclear energy process include both materials from the nuclear fuel cycle and equipment used in the transformation of nuclear energy that becomes contaminated through continued exposure to radioactive fuel, impurity elements, and cooling media. Although these waste products, especially high-level radioactive wastes, are moderately to very hazardous, they are […]

Along with economic return on investment, PV technology must achieve an adequate energy return on investment in order to qualify as a truly green technology. PV panels are made using a number of different processes under differing conditions, so there is noone standard for measuring the energy input required per panel. Also, recouping the energy […]

The distribution of wind speeds in Table 12-1 provides a solid basis for calculating available energy at this site. However, suppose we only knew U = 5.57 m/s, and did not have the hourly bin data for the year. Observations have shown that in many locations, if the average wind speed is known, the probability […]

Biofuels for transportation include any products derived from living organisms, ranging from food crops, to plant and tree material, to microorganisms, that can be processed into substitutes for liquid transportation fuels. The use of biofuels for transportation dates back to the early years of the ICE, when Rudolf Diesel, inventor of the diesel engine, used […]

Following from the advantages of the portfolio approach, as discussed above, most projections of primary energy production for the twenty-first century recognize that the three endpoint technologies of Table 15-1 will all play a role in meeting demand, although the relative contribution of each resource varies from projection to projection. In this section we consider […]

Sequestration research up to the present time indicates that between subterranean and sea-bottom options, there is adequate capacity for sequestration of all foreseeable CO2 emissions from fossil fuel production, provided that we invest sufficiently in facilities to separate and sequester it. The risk associated with sequestration, both from leakage under ordinary conditions and from seismic […]

In the preceding section, we considered sunlight traveling through the atmosphere, without necessarily considering the effect of the sun’s position in the sky on the amount of energy available. In this section, we introduce several other terms used to discuss solar geometry, and then chart the sun’s position in the sky as a function of […]

Useful thermal energy obtained from a solar collector is the difference between incident solar radiation transmitted through the glazing and absorbed as heat, and heat lost back to ambient conditions. The difference is the heat transferred to the working fluid. In a steady state, the governing equation, normalized to the absorber plate area, is qx […]