Sustainable Power Generation: Current Status, Future Challenges, and Perspectives addresses emerging problems faced by the transition to sustainable electricity generation and combines perspectives of engineering and economics to provide a well-rounded overview. This book features an in-depth discussion of the main aspects of sustainable energy and the infrastructure of existing technologies. It goes on to evaluate natural resources that are sustainable and convenient forms of energy, and finishes with an investigation of the environmental effects of energy systems and power generating systems of the future. Other sections tackle fundamental topics such as thermal power, nuclear energy, bioenergy, hydropower, challenges and risks to sustainable options, and emerging technologies that support global power trends.
Sustainable Power Generation explores the future of sustainable electricity generation, highlighting topics such as energy justice, emerging competences, and major transitions that need to be navigated. This is an ideal reference for researchers, engineers, and other technical specialists working in the energy sector, as well as environmental specialists and policy makers.
Provides a multidisciplinary, structured approach to electricity generation, focusing on the key areas of technology, business, project management, and sustainability
Includes analytics and discussions of sustainability metrics, underlying issues, and challenges
Presents business cases, offering a mix of academic depth and practicality on energy options
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Understanding what energy and power are, and how energy is derived from various sources and transformed to the most usable shape, is of vital importance for sustainable development. The first part opens up the discussion about fundamental energy sources, global planetary cycles, and basics of energy systems that function these days.
Chapter One
Concept of energy
Abstract
This chapter opens the discussion with the concept of energy, setting up the playground of the book. Energy is one of the major drivers of the economy and therefore requires proper treatment through quantification, which is the second point covered in this chapter. Finally, the types and sources of energy are considered along with the ways they can be transformed into secondary energy through conversion chains. Finally, this chapter states the background reasoning and the logic of the book strucutre.
Keywords
Energy; power; energy conversion; chemical energy; mechanical energy; nuclear energy; radiant energy; heat; electricity
1.1 What is energy
The term energy has been utilized in everyday life so widely that there is hardly anyone who would object to its understanding. And it is partly true: energy is an essential part of our daily activities, we “use” it every moment while doing any kind of activity. Energy is everywhere and runs our cars, powers our gadgets, brings light — these are a few basic examples we may ever think of. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the path of energy is by far more complicated and much more important to understand as it underlines deeper processes than, for example, pure charging of your cell phone. To reveal these paths and trends, we shall first start with the understanding of what energy really is.
1.1.1 Concept of energy
The concept of energy was first introduced in mechanics by English philosopher Sir Isaac Newton when he hypothesized about kinetic and potential energies. However, the emergence of energy as a unifying concept in physics was not adopted until the middle of the 19th century and is considered one of the major achievements of the century [1].
By definition [2,3], energy of a system is the capacity of this system to do work on another system, for example, to pull a weight against some force like gravity or friction. Work W is the consequence of the expenditure of energy and is defined as the product of a force F, acting on an object, and the distance d that the object moves, i.e.,
. In this example, force F is assumed constant over time of the movement, and acts in the same direction as the movement of the object.
Energy is a scalar quantity that cannot be observed directly, but can be recorded and evaluated by indirect measures. While the absolute value of the energy of a system is difficult to measure, the energy change is relatively easy to evaluate [1]. The gravity force would pull any object down so one would require energy to lift this weight up against that force from the initial height
to the desired height
, so that
This means that this weight would accumulate some energy when lifted to any height. When pulling a weight over the surface or pumping air inside a vessel, one would require energy to perform this work, while generating some heat.
1.1.2 Forms of energy
Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it can only be converted from one form to another. This statement is called the first law of thermodynamics and defines internal energy as a state function and provides a formal statement of the conservation of energy [1].
Energy comes in various forms; however, in general the total energy of a system can be represented as a combination of two types of energy:
• Potential energy reflects the potential (or possibility) of a system to have motion or to do work. This energy can have different nature and may be due to the position of the objects relative to others, stresses within the object, electric charge, etc.
• Kinetic energy is determined by the movement of the object or the composite motion. It is usually defined as the work needed to accelerate an object of a given mass from the rest state to its current velocity. In classical mechanics this energy is proportional to the mass of the object and the square of velocity, i.e.,
These categories of energy have been introduced as a convenient way to describe the s...
Table of contents
Cover image
Title page
Table of Contents
Copyright
Dedication
About the author
Preface
Acronyms
Part One: Introduction to energy and energy systems
Introduction
Chapter One: Concept of energy
Chapter Two: Evaluation of energy resources
Chapter Three: Energy system and basic electricity market
Part Two: Sustainable energy and power generation
Introduction
Chapter Four: The system boundaries of sustainability
Chapter Five: Sustainable energy development
Chapter Six: Power system and the environment
Part Three: Thermal power as a bridging technology towards sustainability
Introduction
Chapter Seven: Concept of a thermal power plant
Chapter Eight: Efficient and clean combustion of fossil fuels within boiler island
Chapter Nine: Power island and balance of plant
Chapter Ten: Fossil energy economics and project lifecycle
Part Four: Past, present, and future of sustainable nuclear power
Introduction
Chapter Eleven: Nuclear energy
Chapter Twelve: Modern nuclear power plant
Chapter Thirteen: Development of sustainable nuclear power plant project
Part Five: Sustainable hydropower
Introduction
Chapter Fourteen: Traditional hydropower plant technology
Chapter Fifteen: Hydropower project lifecycle
Part Six: Emerging sustainable energy systems
Introduction
Chapter Sixteen: Wind energy
Chapter Seventeen: Solar energy
Chapter Eighteen: Energy from municipal solid waste
Chapter Nineteen: Bioenergy
Chapter Twenty: Geothermal energy
Chapter Twenty-One: Ocean energy conversion
Part Seven: Future of sustainable power generation
Introduction
Chapter Twenty-Two: Can we build a sustainable power generation system?
