Fossil fuels environmental consequences

However, SOLARSTORE system could replace 72% of fossil fuel, which consequently results in a significant reduction of the total enviroiunental impacts and the total annual environmental impacts are considerable lower than by using other systems. SOLARSTORE system provides a better solution for reduction of negative environmental impacts by using solar energy, which encourages further development and production from the environmental point of view. 

Sulfur chemistry is important both in combustion and in the petrochemical industry. Most fossil fuels contain sulfur, and also biofuels and household waste have a sulfur content. As a consequence sulfur species are often present in combustion processes. Knowledge of gas-phase sulfur chemistry occurring in combustion has bearing on pollutant emissions and on system corrosion. Air pollution by SO2 still constitutes a major environmental concern and search for control techniques has motivated research also on high-temperature homogeneous sulfur chemistry. However, more recent work on sulfur chemistry has been concerned mainly with the effect of sulfur on other pollutant emissions, such as NO and CO, and with the SO3/SO2 ratio, which is important for the corrosive potential of the flue gas and for formation of sulfur containing aerosols. 

Often, many simultaneously occurring pollutants or contaminants determine an environmental problem. In industry, agriculture, and households, products are often mixtures of many compounds. The process of production and consumption is accompanied by emissions and consequently by contamination. One example is the use of toxaphene in the past, a very complex mixture of polychlorinated camphenes, as a pesticide. Technical toxaphene consists of more than 175 individual compounds. A second example is industrial and domestic emissions resulting from the combustion of fossil fuels. The emissions contain both a mixture of gases (SO2, NOx, CO2, etc.) and airborne particulate matter which itself contains a broad range of heavy metals and also polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH). 

The first section contains overview and introductory material, some historical background, summaries of the present state of knowledge, and other general topics applicable to all fossil fuel These include environmental consequences of fossil fuel combustion, polysulfide chemistry, microbial metabolism of sulfur compounds, and a review of methods for isolating sulfur compounds from petroleum. 

The emphasis of this symposium is on the geochemistry of sulfur rather than on processing, utilization or environmental consequences. Nevertheless the factual information, generalizations and insights provided by these current research topics should be informative and should suggest practical applications for many concerns of the fossil fuel industry. 

By the mid-1980s, the general situation was clear enough. The continuation of our present industrial civilization with its reliance on fossil fuels, extensive use of pesticides and fertilizers, and the resulting contaminants will lead eventually to collapse from exhaustion of resources (Meadows, 1972) (Fig. 15.2), and from the health and economic consequences of environmental pollution. There is controversy about the time at which a breakdown would be apparent, but it is clear to those who are conscious ofthe huge inertia in the industrial processes that are causing the trouble... 

People have always turned to the cheapest and most efficient technologies. In the last few centuries, fossil fuels such as coal and oil were discovered in large amounts. These fuels were also very efficient, producing large amounts of energy. It is only recently that we have become aware of the environmental consequences of our use of fossil fuels. 

The environmental effects of pollutants and wastes have traditionally been confronted with actions at the immediate vicinity level. A typical example involves the emissions resulting from fossil fuel burning in industrial and power plants, where taller stacks were built in the past to disperse pollutants in the air (mainly sulfur oxides) in a more efficient way. However, it is now recognized that these oxides can have important effects even in regions far away from the emission source due to environmental transport phenomena. Consequently, increasing the height of the stacks did not solve the problem. 

As a consequence of environmental concerns associated with burning fossil fuels during the latter part of the twentieth century, greater efforts have been made to recover sulfur from... 

In a sense, the chemistry of O2 itself represents something of a nonproblem the photosynthetic cycle keeps in balance the production and removal (through respiration) of molecular oxygen. Net removal of O2 accompanies the combustion of fossil fuel but even were the Earth s entire reserve of carbon burned to yield CO2, the concomitant decrease in partial pressure of O2 would be small and probably of little environmental consequence when compared to the enormous increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Our research efforts are primarily concerned with the establishment of a reliable base of kinetic and photochemical data that may be applied to the development of advanced models of atmospheric chemistry. Field measurements alone provide only part of the answer in that one cannot measure everything simultaneously and there are certain minor constituents (such as HO2) which even now cannot be adequately monitored at ambient concentrations. All models are in a sense underdefined in that were one to vary freely the available parameters, perfectly good fits to the limited field data would be possible. The goal of laboratory studies is to constrain the number of free parameters that are available to a large extent I think that we have been successful. 

The prospects for this resource have been known for over 100 years and research on the production of oil and gas from this type of rock has been conducted since the resource was first discovered. However, a commercial retort that would produce synthetic fossil fuel products in amounts comparable with the traditional sources of these products has never been built in the United States. The current technological interest in oil shale is the third time this resource has had such an intensive appraisal. Because of energy and mineral shortages, the prospects for development appear favorable. However, during the current appraisal, environmental considerations have been added to the questions to be answered before this new industry is developed. Consequently, recovery of fuel from oil shale is one of a few industrial processes which permits... 

---