APES UNIT 6 VOCABULARY

Renewable energy resources: Sources of energy that are infinite. 

Potentially renewable: An energy source that can be regenerated indefinitely as long as its not over harvested. Ex. Biomass

Nondepletable: An energy source that cannot be used up. Ex. Solar, goethermal, wind, tidal energy

Commercial energy sources: Energy sources that are bought and sold, such as coal, oil, and natural gas.

Subsistence energy sources: Energy sources gathered by individuals for their own immediate needs including straw, sticks, and animal dung.

Energy conservation: Methods for finding and implementing ways to use less energy

Energy efficiency The ratio of the amount of energy expanded in the form you want to the total amount of energy that is introduced into the system

Energy Return on Energy Investment:EROEI: The amount of energy we get out of an energy source for every unit of energy expanded on its production.

Biofuel: A liquid fuel such as ethanol or biodiesel treated from processed or refined biomass

Modern carbon: carbon and biomass that was recently in the atmosphere

Fossil carbon: old carbon contain and fossil fuels

Carbon neutral: an activity that does not change atmospheric CO2 concentrations

Coal: a solid fuel form primarily from the remains of trees, ferns and other plant materials that were preserved 280 million 360 million years ago.

Peat: a precursor to coal made up of partly organic decomposed material, including mosses

Lignite: a brown cold that is a soft cemetery rock that sometimes shows traces of plant structure; it typically contains 60 to 70% carbon

Bituminous coal: a black or dark brown hole that contains Bitumen also known as asphalt. It typically contains up to 80% carbon.

Anthracite: also known as hard-core, it contains greater than 90% carbon. It has the highest quantity of energy per volume of coal and the fewest impurities.

Natural gas: a relatively clean fossil fuel containing 80 to 90% methane also known as CH4 and 5 to 20 percent ethane, propane, and butane.

Crude oil: a mixture of hydrocarbon such as oil, gasoline, kerosene, as well as water and sulfur that exist in a liquid state underground, and when brought to the surface.

Petroleum: is found in underground reservoirs beneath the Earth's surface. It's a smelly, yellow-to-black liquid that's used as fuel and in the chemical industry. The crude oil is extracted from the petroluem.

Tar Sands: slow flowing, viscous deposits of bitumen or asphalt mixed with sand, water and clay; also known as oil sands.

Energy carrier: an energy source, such as electricity that can move and deliver energy in a convenient usable form to end users.

Combined cycle: a feature and some natural gas fired power plants that uses both a steam turbine to generate electricity, and a separate turbine that is powered by the exhaust gases from natural gas combustion to turn other turbine to generate electricity.

Capacity: the maximum electrical output of something such as a power plant

Capacity factor: the fraction of time a power plant operates during the year

Cogeneration: the use of fuel to both generate electricity and deliver heat to a building or industrial process. Also known as combined heat and power.

Fracking: short for hydraulic fracturing, a method of oil and gas extraction that uses high-pressure fluid fluids to force open existing cracks in rocks, deep underground.

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs): a type of organic compound air pollutants that evaporate at typical atmospheric temperatures.

Turbine: a device that can be turned by water, steam, or wind to produce power, such as electricity.

Electrical grid: a network of interconnected transmission lines. It connects electricity generation sources and linkts them with End users for electricity..

Energy quality: the ease with which an energy source can be used to do work

Nuclear power: electricity generated from the nuclear energy contained in nuclear fuel.

Radioactivity: the admission of ionizing radiation or particles caused by the spontaneous disintegration of atomic nuclei.

Fission: a nuclear reaction in which a neutron strikes a relatively large atomic nucleus, which then splits into two or more parts, releasing additional neutrons and energy in the form of heat.

Fuel rod: a cylindrical to the closest nuclear fool within a nuclear reactor

Control: a psychological device inserted between the fuel rods in a nuclear reactor to absorb neutrons and slow or stop the fission reaction.

Radioactive decay: when a radioactive isotope, admits, alpha or beta particles or gamma rays.

Half life: the time it takes for 1/2 of the original radioactive parent atoms to decay.

Radioactive waste: nuclear fuel that can no longer produce enough heat to be useful in a power plant, but continues to the radioactivity.

Becquerel (Bq): a measurement of the rate of which a sample of radioactive material decay; one BQ equal to the decay of one item per second.

Curie: a unit of measure for radiation a curie is 37 billion decays per second

Bio mass: biological material that has mass. Wood, charcoal, manure, etc. Theres also Liquid biomass such as ethanol and biodiesel

Charcoal: woody material that has been heated in the absence of oxygen so that water and some volatile compounds are driven off.

Particulates or particulate matter: solid or liquid particles, suspended in the air, also known as soot.

Carbon monoxide: a colorless, odorless gas that is formed during incomplete combustion of most materials.

Nitrogen oxide: a byproduct of combustion of any fuel in the atmosphere. (Which contain 78% nitrogen)

Carbon dioxide: a byproduct of all combustion, carbon dioxide from bio fuels contain modern carbon from woody material rather than fossil carbon or fossil fuels.

Bio fuel: liquid fuel created from processed or define biomass

Ethanol: alcohol made by converting starch with the sugars from plant materials into alcohol and CO2.

Bio diesel: a diesel substitute produced by extracting and chemically altering oil from plants.

Passive Solar: a use of energy from the sun that takes advantage of solar radiation without active technology.

Active solar energy: a use of technology that captures and towards the energy of sunlight with electrical equipment and devices.

Photovoltaic solar cells: a use of energy from the sun as light, not heat, and converting it directly into electricity.

hydroelectricity: electricity generated by the kinetic energy of moving water

Water impoundment: the storage of water in a reservoir behind a dam.

Run of the river: Hydro electricity generation in which water is retained behind a low, small dam or no damn.

Tidal energy: energy that comes from the movement of water, driven by the gravitational pool of the moon.

Siltation: sediments from moving water that accumulate on the bottom of a reservoir.

Ground source heat pump: a technology that transfers heat from the ground to a building.

Electrolysis: the application of an electric current to water molecules to split into hydrogen and oxygen.

Wind energy: energy generator from the kinetic energy of moving air

Wind turbine a turbine that converts to kinetic energy of moving air into electricity.

Phantom loads: electrical demand by a device that draws electrical current, even when it is turned off.

Peak Demand: the greatest quantity of energy energy used at any one time

Passive solar design: construction technique, desire to take advantage of solar radiation without active technology.

Thermal mass: a property of a building material that allows it to maintain heat or cold.

Smart grid: an efficient, self regulating electricity distribution network that accepts any source of electricity and distributed automatically to end users, a smarter uses computer programs and the Internet to tell electricity generators when electric electricity is needed.

Oxygenated fuel: a fuel with oxygen as part of the molecule

Cellulosic ethanol: and ethanol derived from cellulose the cell wall material implants it could be used to replace fossil fuels.