Depleting resources

Improve resource use by conserving depleting resources and using renewables or recycled materials where possible. 

These issues of scarcity, high environmental costs and sustainable use will ultimately be reflected in the market price of resources. It is therefore economically sensible to plan for significantly higher costs for some of these materials in the future. Trying to avoid the use of scarce, damaging or depleting resources therefore brings both environmental and financial benefits. 

The ability of the U. S. Frasch industry to fly-wheel domestic supply and demand in the short-run depends on its current inventories and capacity utilization. In the mid-term, mines may be opened or closed based on perceived long-term market equilibria. Longterm, however, in the absence of a significant successful exploration program, Frasch sulfur is a depleting resource. As the peakload, rather than base-load, producer its minimum price is that which will cover the costs of the incremental mine. Its actual price will represent supply-demand equilibrium in world markets. 

The proposed method for quantitatively describing the sustainability of resource utilization in a process has several advantages. First, it considers the degree of resource renewability, which allows even subtle differences in the depletion of different resources to be accounted for. Second, it also includes the (natural) reserves of resources, making the method yet more refined. Finally, the concept of depletion times and their translation to abundance factors allow the resource sustainability parameter a of a process to be limited by its most rapidly depleting resource, which is quite realistic. 

The effect of the minimum abundance factor amin on the sustainability parameter a may seem counterintuitive. However, it must be realized that the sustainability parameter a only expresses that part of process sustainability that involves the availability of the resources used. The fact that process 6 in Table 13.5 may be more sustainable than, for example, process 2 in terms of environmental impact is not relevant to this particular aspect of process sustainability. Purely in terms of resource utilization, process 2 is more sustainable than process 6, because process 2 does not depend on a rapidly depleting resource like oil. 

Nondepleting resources are better than depleting resources. 

Nondepleting resources are better than depleting resources. Green chemistry principle seven is, Use of renewable feedstocks (Anastas and Warner, 1998). As a practical matter, for a resource to be considered renewable, it must not only be capable of being replaced or restored, but also such replacement must occur within one human generation. Renewal on this timescale keeps the costs of depletion from being externalized to future generations. 

Hybrids can be viewed as "bridge" technologies which will smooth the transition from depletable resources to an era in which renewables and inexhaustibles such as coal and possibly nuclear fission (breeder) are the dominant resources, (6). 

Renewable energy is the ultimate goal. Over the very long term, there must be a sustainable energy system that does not require a depletable resource. Unfortunately, at this time there are no systems that are economically competitive and renewable. The Department of Energy supports this goal, but it will be universities or the private sector that reach it. 

Enhance the quality of renewable resources and approach the maximum attainable recycling of depletable resources... 

Increased heat may mean worsened air pollution, damaged crops, and depleted resources in some areas. 

Overall, the recent developments highlighted in this chapter have documented increasing academic and industrial efforts in the utilization of biomass-derived renewable monomers for the production of synthetic polymers that offer sustainable alternatives to the current petroleum-based polymers. Furthermore, some of the sustainable polymers also exhibit enhanced or unique materials properties over the polymers derived from the depleting resources. Such efforts will continue in the future, with an emphasis being placed on making biomass-derived polymers not only renewable but also technically and economically practicable and competitive. 

Certainly, corrosion has effects on economy, depletes resources and causes costly and untimely failures of plants, equipment and components. In 2002, National Association of Corrosion Engineers (NACE) refers that the total annual estimated direct cost of corrosion in the U.S. was 276 billion—approximately 3.1% of the nations gross domestic product (GDP) [2]. The present valuation of the annual cost of corrosion worldwide from World Corrosion Organization is U.S. 2.2 trillion, which is over 3% of the world s GDP [3]. 

For the United States, the prediction of petroleum being a depletable resource turned out to be correct (as it would with any natnrally occurring resource), and, after the United States peaked in 1971 and thus lost its excess production capacity, the OPEC consortium was (literally) given a free hand at the manipulation of petrolenm prices. Since then petroleum production in several other countries has also peaked. However, for a variety of reasons, it is difficult to predict the oil peak in any given region. Based on available production data, proponents have previously (and incorrectly) predicted the peak for the world to be in years 1989,1995, or in the 1995-2000 period. Other predictions chose 2007 and beyond for the peak of petroleum production. 

Depleted resources Resources that have been mined includes coal recovered, coal lost in mining, and coal reclassified as subeconomic becanse of mining. 

I.E. Tilton, On Borrowed Time Assessing the Threat of Mineral Depletion, Resources for the Future, Washington DC, 2003. 

The primary written exercise is a discussion of the possible reasons that quarrying ceased at this site. These include difficulties with water management, encroachment of urban development, difficulties in meeting product quality specifications, and the more basic issue of a depleted resource. Each of these issues is teased out of the discussions at each stop around the excursion, as was described in the previous section. 

The reported strategy of DuPont is to derive 25% of its revenues from non-depletable resources by 2010. To this end it is reported to have switched production of a key polymer feedstock from a petrochemical to a maize-based process. In the case of Sorona (polytrimethylene terephthalate), the maize-based version is claimed to have environmental advantages over its petrochemical counterpart because the manufacturing process uses less energy, reduces emissions and employs renewable resources. 

As a general rule, it is best if feedstocks come from renewable sources rather than depletable resources. A biomass feedstock, for example, can be obtained as a renewable resource grown by plants on land, whereas a petroleum-based feedstock is obtained from depletable crude oil resources. However, the environmental trade-offs between these two sources may be more complex than they first appear in that the petroleum feedstock may be simply pumped from a few wells in Saudi Arabia, whereas the biomass may require large areas of land, significant quantities of fertilizer, and large volumes of irrigation water for its production. Another important decision is whether or not the feedstock should be made entirely from virgin materials or at least in part from recycled material. 

Compounds called inhibitors are being synthesized to hinder or completely stop the enzyme s function. Natural products have already been discovered, experimented upon and proved to be safe and viable. However, due to depleting resources, synthetic derivatives... 

It may, therefore, be observed that corrosion is a potent force which destroys economy, depletes resources and causes costly and untimely failures of plants, equipment and components. 

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