Exposure to indoor air pollution from the combustion of solid fuels has been implicated, with varying degrees of evidence, as a causal agent of several diseases in developing countries. In a review of the epidemiological evidence for the health effects of indoor smoke from solid fuels, Bruce et al. concluded that, despite some methodological limitations, epidemiological studies provide compelling evidence of causality for acute respiratory infections (ARI) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). This is reinforced by experimental data, studies of pathogenesis, and indirect evidence from environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) and ambient air pollution studies. (more…)
Important research over the past few decades has illustrated that indoor air pollution and indoor smoke from solid fuel poses i ...
Exposure to air pollutants and air pollution problem are very high in indoor environments in developing countries. Smith has es ...
Smoke from biomass and coal combustion contains a large number of pollutants with known health hazards, including particulate matte ...
Indoor air quality (IAQ) research deals with the presence, levels, health effects, and control of physical, chemical, and biologica ...
In terms of aggregate health effects, household solid fuel use is currently the most important source of indoor air pollution i ...
Transportation is another sector that has increased its relative share of primary energy use. This sector has serious concerns as it is a significant source of CO2 emissions and other airborne pollutants, and it is almost totally based on oil as its energy source. An important aspect of future changes in transportation depends on what happens to the available oil resources, production and prices. At present, 95% of all energy for transportation comes from oil. (more…)
Under both former President Bush and new President Obama, the U.S. government has vowed to reduce reliance on imported oil. The ...
Global energy consumption in the last half century has increased very rapidly and is expected to continue to grow over the next ...
From prehistory until the Industrial Revolution, most energy sources used by humans were localized (i.e., available within 5–10 mil ...
Do we have the resources? Rudolf Diesel developed the diesel engine which ran on biodiesel vegetable oil in the late 1800s. At the ...
One study that does address the peak-oil scenario directly is a 2005 report conducted for the National Energy Technology Labora ...
Following the recent completion of three nuclear power plants, there is now some 9.6 GW of nuclear capacity in the United Kingdom. The nuclear share of electrical output, which has stood at around 13% for many years, should rise to around 20% when this capacity is in full operation. A further two reactors are currently under construction which will increase the British nuclear capacity to more than 12 GW by the late 1980s, which could bring the nuclear share of electrical output to around 25%. (more…)
Geographers researching the development of nuclear power have shifted emphasis from commercialization, cost, risk, public acceptanc ...
The long-term prospects for the U.K. economy are inevitably uncertain, and the most recent Department of Energy long-term proje ...
Nuclear fission and fusion Research and Development continues to account for nearly half of the total spending by IEA countries, al ...
Sir Arthur Eddington’s general address on subatomic energy at the 1930 World Power Conference in Berlin stirred the imagination of ...
For years it was out of desperation that observers have advised and viewed of American energy policy and geopolitical risks regardi ...
Indoor air quality (IAQ) research deals with the presence, levels, health effects, and control of physical, chemical, and biological factors in indoor environments, including homes, workplaces, and vehicles. IAQ research in industrialized countries has examined hundreds of specific factors (e.g., temperature, various chemicals, and mold), sources of pollution environment (e.g., environmental tobacco smoke, occupational factors, consumer cleaning products, and moisture), and control technologies (e.g., ventilation). (more…)
Important research over the past few decades has illustrated that indoor air pollution and indoor smoke from solid fuel poses i ...
In terms of aggregate health effects, household solid fuel use is currently the most important source of indoor air pollution i ...
Exposure to air pollutants and air pollution problem are very high in indoor environments in developing countries. Smith has es ...
Reducing exposure to indoor air pollution from household energy use can be achieved through interventions in of the following a ...
Exposure to indoor air pollution from the combustion of solid fuels has been implicated, with varying degrees of evidence, as a ...
The term hybrid energy system refers to those applications in which multiple energy unit conversion devices are used together to supply an energy requirement. These systems are often used in isolated applications and normally include at least one renewable energy source in the configuration. Hybrid energy systems are used an alternative to more conventional systems, which typically are based on a single fossil fuel source. Hybrid energy systems may also be used as part of distributed generation application in conventional electricity grid. (more…)
There are numerous possible applications for hybrid power systems. The most common examples are (1) remote AC network, (2) dist ...
The characteristics and components of a hybrid system depend greatly on the application. The most important consideration is wh ...
Renewable energy generators are devices that convert energy from its original form in the renewable energy source into electric ...
The primary electric drivetrain components for fuel cell vehicles are the same as those for any electric vehicle: traction motors, ...
Although some scientists and critics still dispute that human caused greenhouse gases are causing climate change, the majority of scientists and climate experts assert that global warming is a serious problem that could have devastating consequences unless action is taken to reduce fossil fuel emissions. In 2007, for example, the Nobel Prize–winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a scientific body charged by the United Nations with summarizing the best climate science, concludes that evidence of the warming of our climate is “unequivocal.” (more…)
Still hotly debated by some, human-induced global warming is now accepted in the scientific community. Earth’s average yearly tempe ...
Since the early 1960s, climate change and air quality have become major and often controversial issues in many countries and am ...
Addressing global warming, however, is a highly complex and daunting endeavor. Many climate experts have urged the world to stabili ...
Earth’s climate is a complex system of interacting natural components. These components include the atmosphere, the ocean, and the ...
Options for dealing with the threats of climate change include both adaptation to inevitable changes and mitigation, or lessening, ...
There are various and somewhat complementary reasons to foster the growth of renewable energy sources in Europe. A major incentive for renewable energy sources policies in the past two decades has been to reduce the environmental impact of energy use both locally (e.g., pollutant emission reduction) and globally (e.g., greenhouse gas and carbon emissions reduction). In some countries, concerns about the safety of nuclear power generation have motivated the search for renewable energy sources. Another motivation for replacing foreign fossil and nuclear fuels with domestic renewable energy sources relates to security issues and Europe’s growing dependency on foreign energy sources. (more…)
In Europe, modern renewable energy sources technologies were explored thoroughly for the first time after the oil embargo/ price cr ...
Renewable energy sources cannot run out and causes so little damage to the environment that its use does not need to be restric ...
The development of the ‘‘new’’ wind and solar technologies is of great importance for the future contribution of RESs to energy sup ...
World energy use has increased steadily over the past several decades. Much of the growth in world energy consumption has been ...
Over the last decade, the number of countries researching the potential of biomass and bioenergy for energy services rose rapid ...
Fuel cell vehicles are being developed because they promise to meet the requirements expected of automobiles in a market increasingly constrained by environmental and resource limitations. Air pollution and oil dependence have been persistent challenges for vehicles powered by petroleum fuels (gasoline and diesel). Global warming presents a new challenge in the need to limit carbon dioxide (CO) emissions from fossil fuel combustion. (more…)
There are different types of vehicle propulsion systems and the transportation fuels that have been studied for their potential ...
The internal combustion engine has dominated the car and light-truck market for over 100 years. Although remarkable improvement ...
The commercialization prospects for fuel cell vehicles depend not only on their performance and cost, but also on how well th ...
A fuel cell is an electrochemical device that directly converts a fuel to electricity by means of reactions on the surfaces of ...
The leading automotive brands are being focused to produce electric vehicles because they believe they represent a harmony to the e ...
At present, in the United States and worldwide, motor vehicles are fueled almost exclusively by petroleum based gasoline (or reformulated gasoline) and diesel fuels. Since the first oil price shock in 1973, efforts have been made to seek alternative fuels to displace gasoline and diesel fuels and achieve energy and environmental benefits. Some of the alternative fuels that have been researched and used are liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), compressed natural gas (CNG), liquefied natural gas (LNG), methanol (MeOH), dimethyl ether (DME), Fischer– Tropsch diesel (FTD), hydrogen (H 2 ), ethanol (EtOH), biodiesel, and electricity. Production processes associated with gasoline, diesel, and each of these alternative fuels differ. (more…)
There are different types of vehicle propulsion systems and the transportation fuels that have been studied for their potential ...
Gasoline is used mainly by cars, motorcycles, and light trucks; diesel is used mainly by heavier trucks, buses, and trains. Togethe ...
The energy efficiencies of various fuel production pathways from well to pump. The efficiencies shown are defined as the energy ...
The United States depends heavily on imported oil to fuel its transportation infrastructure. The use of alternative fuel derive ...
Most alternative fuel vehicles on the road today were originally designed for gasoline, but converted for use with an alternative f ...
The spark-ignition and compression-ignition engine and internal combustion engines technologies that are currently employed in motor vehicles were developed more than 100 years ago. These conventional vehicle technologies are fueled by petroleum-derived gasoline and diesel fuels (the socalled conventional fuels). Over the past 100 years, the conventional technologies have been dramatically improved, reducing cost and increasing performance. (more…)
ISO document 14040 identifies four areas for using life cycle analysis (LCA) results: (1) identifying opportunities to improve ...
The fuel cycle for a given transportation fuel includes the following processes: energy feedstock (or primary energy) product ...
There are different types of vehicle propulsion systems and the transportation fuels that have been studied for their potential ...
Because different studies have different system boundaries and parametric assumptions, the studies described in Section 7 resulted ...
For processes that produce multiple products, energy and emission burdens have to be allocated to individual products. ISO 14040 ad ...