Natural resource

• A Natural resource is a thing people can

use which comes from Nature: people do
not make it themselves. Examples of
natural resources are air, water, wood, oil,
solar energy, wind energy , hydro-electric
energy, coal water, minerals. Pertroleum
used in buses is not a natural resource, for
example, because people make it.
 The two sorts of natural
resource

• We often say there are two sorts of natural

resource: renewable resources and non-
renewable resources.
 Renewable resource

• A renewable resource grows again or

comes back again after we use it. For
example, sun,water,tree,fish.
 Non-renewable resource
• A non-renewable resource is a resource that
does not grow or come back, or a resource that
would take a very long time to come back or
grow. For example, coal is a non-renewable
resource. When we use coal, there is less coal
afterwards. One day, there will be no more a lot
of natural resources to make goods. They can
use a resource directly (for example, eating the
fish or burning the wood to cook the fish), or they
can change it by industry into a different thing
(for example, they can use wind energy to make
electricity to cook the fish).
• Every country or place can get natural
resources. When people do not have one
resource where they live, they can: a) use
another resource, or b) trade with another
country (for example, they can buy oil from
their neighbors). Some resources are rare
- difficult to find - so people sometimes
fight to have them (for example, oil
resources).
• When people do not have some natural
resources their quality of life can drop. For
example, when they can not get clean
water, people may become ill; if there is
not enough wood, trees will be cut and the
forest will disappear over time
(deforestation); if there are not enough fish
in a sea, people can die of starvation.
Some examples of renewable resources
are wood, solar energy, trees, wind,
hydroelectric power, fish and sunlight.
 Energy Resources
• The use of energy has been a key in the development of
the human society by helping it to control and adapt to
the environment. Managing the use of energy is
inevitable in any functional society. In the industrialized
world the development of energy resources has become
essential for agriculture, transportation, waste collection,
information technology, communications that have
become prerequisites of a developed society. The
increasing use of energy since the Industrial Revolution
has also brought with it a number of serious problems,
some of which, such as global warming, present
potentially grave risks to the world.
• In society and in the context of humanities, the
word energy is used as a synonym of energy
resources, and most often refers to substances
like fuels, petroleum products and electricity in
general. These are sources of usable energy, in
that they can be easily transformed to other
kinds of energy sources that can serve a
particular useful purpose. This difference vis a
vis energy in natural sciences can lead to some
confusion, because energy resources are not
conserved in nature in the same way as energy
is conserved in the context of physics. The
actual energy content is always conserved, but
when it is converted into heat for example, it
usually becomes less useful to society, and thus
appears to have been used up.
 Fossil fuels
• Fossil fuels or mineral fuels are fuels
formed by natural resources such as
anaerobic decomposition of buried dead
organisms. The age of the organisms and
their resulting fossil fuels is typically
millions of years, and sometimes exceeds
650 million years.These fuels contain a
high percentage of carbon and
hydrocarbons.
• Fossil fuels range from volatile materials with
low carbon :hydrogen ratios like methane, to
liquid petroleum to nonvolatile materials
composed of almost pure carbon, like anthracite
coal. Methane can be found in hydrocarbon
fields, alone, associated with oil, or in the form of
methane clathrates. It is generally accepted that
they formed from the fossilized remains of dead
plants and animals by exposure to heat and
pressure in the Earth's crust over hundreds of
millions of years. This biogenic theory was first
introduced by Georg Agricola in 1556 and later
by Mikhail Lomonosov in the 18th century.
• It was estimated by the Energy
Information Administration that in 2006
primary sources of energy consisted of
petroleum 36.8%, coal 26.6%, natural gas
22.9%, amounting to an 86% share for
fossil fuels in primary energy production in
the world. Non-fossil sources included
hydroelectric 6.3%, nuclear 6.0%, and
(geothermal, solar, tide, wind, wood,
waste) amounting 0.9 percent. World
energy consumption was growing about
2.3% per year.
• Fossil fuels are non-renewable resources
because they take millions of years to
form, and reserves are being depleted
much faster than new ones are being
formed. The production and use of fossil
fuels raise environmental concerns. A
global movement toward the generation of
renewable energy is therefore under way
to help meet increased energy needs.
• The burning of fossil fuels produces around 21.3
billion tonnes (21.3 gigatonnes) of carbon
dioxide per year, but it is estimated that natural
processes can only absorb about half of that
amount, so there is a net increase of 10.65
billion tonnes of atmospheric carbon dioxide per
year (one tonne of atmospheric carbon is
equivalent to 44/12 or 3.7 tonnes of carbon
dioxide). Carbon dioxide is one of the
greenhouse gases that enhances radiative
forcing and contributes to global warming,
causing the average surface temperature of the
Earth to rise in response, which climate
scientists agree will cause major adverse
effects.
 Origin
• Fossil fuels are formed by the anaerobic
decomposition of remains of organisms including
phytoplankton and zooplankton that settled to
the sea (or lake) bottom in large quantities under
anoxic conditions, millions of years ago. Over
geological time, this organic matter, mixed with
mud, got buried under heavy layers of sediment.
The resulting high levels of heat and pressure
caused the organic matter to chemically alter,
first into a waxy material known as kerogen
which is found in oil shales, and then with more
heat into liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons in a
process known as catagenesis.
• There is a wide range of organic, or
hydrocarbon, compounds in any given fuel
mixture. The specific mixture of
hydrocarbons gives a fuel its characteristic
properties, such as boiling point, melting
point, density, viscosity, etc. Some fuels
like natural gas, for instance, contain only
very low boiling, gaseous components.
Others such as gasoline or diesel contain
much higher boiling components.
• Terrestrial plants, on the other hand, tend
to form coal. Many of the coal fields date
to the Carboniferous period of Earth's
history. Terrestrial plants also form type III
kerogen, a source of natural gas.
 Importance

An oil well in the Gulf of Mexico A petrochemical refinery

in Grangemouth,
Scotland, UK
• Fossil fuels are of great importance
because they can be burned (oxidized to
carbon dioxide and water), producing
significant amounts of energy. The use of
coal as a fuel predates recorded history.
Coal was used to run furnaces for the
melting of metal ore. Semi-solid
hydrocarbons from seeps were also
burned in ancient times, but these
materials were mostly used for
waterproofing and embalming.
• Commercial exploitation of petroleum,
largely as a replacement for oils from
animal sources (notably whale oil) for use
in oil lamps began in the nineteenth
century.
• Natural gas, once flared-off as an un-
needed byproduct of petroleum
production, is now considered a very
valuable resource .
• Heavy crude oil, which is much more viscous
than conventional crude oil, and tar sands,
where bitumen is found mixed with sand and
clay, are becoming more important as sources of
fossil fuel. Oil shale and similar materials are
sedimentary rocks containing kerogen, a
complex mixture of high-molecular weight
organic compounds, which yield synthetic crude
oil when heated (pyrolyzed). These materials
have yet to be exploited commercially. These
fuels are employed in internal combustion
engines, fossil fuel power stations and other
uses.
• Prior to the latter half of the eighteenth century, windmills
or watermills provided the energy needed for industry
such as milling flour, sawing wood or pumping water,
and burning wood or peat provided domestic heat. The
wide-scale use of fossil fuels, coal at first and petroleum
later, to fire steam engines, enabled the Industrial
Revolution. At the same time, gas lights using natural
gas or coal gas were coming into wide use. The
invention of the internal combustion engine and its use in
automobiles and trucks greatly increased the demand for
gasoline and diesel oil, both made from fossil fuels.
Other forms of transportation, railways and aircraft also
required fossil fuels. The other major use for fossil fuels
is in generating electricity and the petrochemical
industry. Tar, a leftover of petroleum extraction, is used
in construction of roads.
The End
Done By Nadeem The Killer

Gr. 7B