ME460 Renewable Energy Resources

Course Instructor

Engr. Muhammad Irfan

Department of Mechanical Engineering
Faculty of Engineering & Technology, SUIT
Contents

 What is Energy

 Forms of Energy

 Sources of Energy


What is Energy
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• Scientists define energy as the ability to do work.

• Modern civilization is possible because people have learned how to change energy from one
form to another and then use it to do work.

• People use energy for a variety of things, such as to walk and bicycle, to move cars along
roads and boats through water, to cook food on stoves, to make ice in freezers, to light our
homes and offices, to manufacture products, and to send astronauts into space.
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There are many forms of energy:

•
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These forms of energy can be grouped into two general types of energy for doing work:

Energy can be converted from one form to another.

•
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There are many different sources of energy, but they can all be divided into two categories:

 Renewable and nonrenewable energy sources can be used as primary energy sources to
produce useful energy such as heat, or they can be used to produce secondary energy sources
such as electricity and hydrogen.
 Forms of Energy

Many forms of energy exist, but energy is either potential energy or kinetic energy.
• is energy stored in the bonds of atoms and molecules. Batteries, biomass,
petroleum, natural gas, and coal are examples of chemical energy. For example, chemical
energy is converted to thermal energy when people burn wood in a fireplace or burn
gasoline in a car's engine.

• Mechanical energy is energy stored in objects by tension. Compressed springs and stretched
rubber bands are examples of stored mechanical energy.

• Nuclear energy is energy stored in the nucleus of an atom—the energy that holds the nucleus
together. Large amounts of energy can be released when the nuclei are combined or split
apart.
• Gravitational energy is energy stored in an object's height. The higher and heavier the
object, the more gravitational energy is stored. When a person rides a bicycle down a steep
hill and picks up speed, the gravitational energy is converting to motion energy.
Hydropower is another example of gravitational energy, where gravity forces water down
through a hydroelectric turbine to produce electricity.
• Radiant energy is electromagnetic energy that travels in transverse waves. Radiant energy
includes visible light, x-rays, gamma rays, and radio waves. Light is one type of radiant
energy. Sunshine is radiant energy, which provides the fuel and warmth that make life on
earth possible.

• Thermal energy, or heat, is the energy that comes from the movement of atoms and
molecules in a substance. Heat increases when these particles move faster. Geothermal
energy is the thermal energy in the earth.

• Electrical energy is delivered by tiny, charged particles called electrons, that typically move
through a wire. Lightning is an example of electrical energy in nature.
• Motion energy is energy stored in moving objects. The faster an object moves, the more
energy is stored. It takes energy to get an object moving, and energy is released when an
object slows down. Wind is an example of motion energy. A dramatic example of motion
energy is a car crash—a car comes to a total stop and releases all of its motion energy at
once in an uncontrolled instant.

• Sound is energy moving through substances in longitudinal (compression/rarefaction) waves.

Sound is produced when a force causes an object or substance to vibrate. The energy is
transferred through the substance in a wave. Typically, the energy in sound is smaller than
in other forms of energy.
 Sources of Energy

Energy sources are or

There are many different sources of energy but they are all either renewable or nonrenewable
energy sources.

Renewable and nonrenewable energy sources can be used as sources to

produce useful energy such as heat, or they can be used to produce sources
such as electricity and hydrogen.
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In the United States and many other countries, most energy sources used for doing work are
nonrenewable energy sources:

• Petroleum

• Hydrocarbon gas liquids

• Natural gas

• Coal

• Nuclear energy
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• These energy sources are called nonrenewable because their supplies are limited to the amounts that
we can mine or extract from the earth. Coal, natural gas, and petroleum formed over thousands of
years from the buried remains of ancient sea plants and animals that lived millions of years ago, which
is why we also call those energy sources fossil fuels.

• Nuclear energy is produced from uranium, a nonrenewable energy source whose atoms are split
(through a process called nuclear fission) to create heat and, eventually, electricity. Scientists think
uranium was created billions of years ago when stars formed. Uranium is found throughout the earth’s
crust, but most of it is too difficult or too expensive to mine and process into fuel for nuclear power
plants.
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There are five major renewable energy sources:

• Solar energy from the sun

• Geothermal energy from heat inside the earth

• Wind energy

• Biomass from plants

• Hydropower from flowing water

Renewable energy sources are naturally replenished. Day after day, the sun shines, plants grow,
wind blows, and rivers flow.
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• Throughout most of human history, biomass from plants was the main energy source. Biomass was
burned for warmth and light, to cook food, and to feed the animals people used for transportation and
plowing.

• Nonrenewable energy began replacing most renewable energy in the United States in the early 1800s,
and by the early-1900s, fossil fuels were the main source of energy.

• Biomass continued to be used for heating homes primarily in rural areas and, to a lesser extent, for
supplemental heat in urban areas. In the mid-1980s, use of biomass and other forms of renewable
energy began increasing largely because of incentives for their use, especially for electricity generation.

•
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The chart below shows U.S. energy sources, their major uses, and their percentage shares of total U.S. energy
consumption in 2022.
 Laws of Energy

To scientists, conservation of energy does not mean saving energy. Instead, the law of
conservation of energy says that energy is neither created nor destroyed. When people use
energy, it doesn't disappear. Energy changes from one form of energy into another form of
energy.
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• Energy efficiency is the amount of useful energy obtained from a system. A perfectly energy-
efficient machine would convert all of the energy it uses into useful work. In reality, converting
one form of energy into another form of energy always involves a conversion into useable (or
useful energy) and unusable (or unuseful) forms of energy.

• Many energy transformations are relatively inefficient. The human body is a good example. The
human body is like a machine, and the fuel it requires is food. Food gives a person energy to move,
breathe, and think. However, the human body isn't very efficient at converting food into useful
work. The human body is less than 5% efficient most of the time. The rest of the energy is
converted to heat, which may or may not be useful, depending on how cool or warm a person
wants to be.
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Source:
 Energy Coversion Calculators

• Coal

• Electricity

• Natural gas

• Crude oil

• Gasoline

• Diesel fuel and heating oil

• Measuring energy in food—food calories versus energy calories

• Scientific notation explained—E+10

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• Scientific notation is a short-hand way of writing a number that has a lot of digits. For
example, the number 525,000,000 could be written as 5.25E+08. The +08 indicates the
decimal should be moved eight places to the right. A negative number after the E means the
decimal should be moved that number of places to the left. For example, 5.25E-03 is the same
as 0.00525.
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 Units of Energy

British thermal unit (Btu) is a measure of the heat content of fuels or energy sources. One Btu
is the quantity of heat required to raise the temperature of one pound of liquid water by 1°
Fahrenheit (F) at the temperature that water has its greatest density (approximately 39° F).
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• A single Btu is very small in terms of the amount of energy a single household or an entire
country uses. In 2021, the United States used about 97.33 quadrillion Btu of energy. Written
out, 1 quadrillion is a 1 followed by 15 zeros: 1,000,000,000,000,000.

• You can use energy, or heat content, to compare energy sources or fuels on an equal basis. Fuels can be
converted from physical units of measure (such as weight or volume) to a common unit of
measurement of the energy or heat content of each fuel. The U.S. Energy Information Administration
(EIA) uses Btu as a unit of energy content.

•
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For example, the physical volumes of fossil fuels consumed in the United States in 2022 and Btu
equivalents were:

• The Btu conversion factors below are approximate. Tables with heat content for fuels and
electricity are available in the appendices of the Monthly Energy Review.
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Thank You