California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
CHAPTER 2 THE FOSSIL FUELS
Questions and Problems
1. In Example 2.2 it is shown that gasoline costs more per Btu than does natural gas. Why then do we power our cars and trucks predominantly with gasoline rather than natural gas?
2. Why are fossil fuels not being created in nature fast enough to keep up with our use of them?
3. Why is two-thirds of the petroleum left in the ground after the primary extraction process comes to an end? Can this problem be overcome?
4. If there were originally 30 billion barrels of recoverable oil in Alaska, for how many years could the United States supply its present demand from that source alone?
30x109 barrels of oil (5.8 × 106 BTU / barrel)
174x1015 BTU in Alaska
174x1015 BTU (1/98x1015 BTU/yr) = 1.8 yr
5. On a worldwide basis, how much remaining oil is there per person? (b)How does this compare to the remaining oil per person in the United States?
∞ = 1792×109 + recovered 719×109
7.5x109 people in world
1792×109 / 7.5x109
239 barrels per person
(b) 220×109 barrels
.320 x 109 people in US
220/.32 = 687 barrel per person
6. What is oil shale and how can it be converted into useful fuels for transportation and heating?
7. If your home requires one million Btu of heat energy from the furnace on a cold winter day, what is the cost in dollars to heat the house with natural gas, assuming a 60% furnace efficiency?
8. How many pounds of western subbituminous coal would be needed to heat the house in problem 7 with a 60% efficient furnace?
9. What measures would you recommend to be enacted by the U.S. Congress to promote the conservation of fossil fuels?
10. How many tons of oil shale are required each day to supply a 10,000 bbl/day retort, if the shale yields 25 gallons per ton?
11. How much energy, in foot-pounds, is needed to raise one barrel of oil 25,000 feet? How much is this energy in terms of the heat energy content, in equivalent barrels of oil? Assume that the oil weighs 7.0 lb/gal.
12. It has been estimated that a person can perform continuous manual labor at a power of 50 watts for an 8-hour working day. How many pounds of coal contain the energy equivalent of the useful physical labor a person can perform in this time period? How many gallons of oil?
Multiple Choice Questions
1. A bacterial colony starts growing in a jar at about 11:00 A.M. The size of the colony doubles each minute, and the jar is just full at 12:00 noon. At what time was the jar 1/8 full? See Appendix A.
a) 11:07
b) 11:15
c) 11:30
d) 11:36
e) 11:45
f) 11:56
g) 11:57 1/8 2^60 = 2^57
h) 11:58
2. Coal, oil, and gas represent approximately ___%, ___%, and ___%, respectively, of the U.S. fossil fuel energy use.
a) 23, 44, 33 ans
b) 25, 20, 55
c) 90, 5, 5
d) 35, 35, 30 (online ( x, 36, 29)
e) 52, 38, 10
3. In the United States the total energy consumed per year per person is the equivalent of about ___ barrels of oil.
a) 5.8
b) 58 ans
c) 580
d) 5800
98x1015 BTU/yr / 340x106 Americans
= 290x106 BTU / person per year
290x106 BTU ( 1 / 5.8 × 106 BTU / barrel) = 50 barrel/yr
4. The declining order of importance for the various energy sources in the United States is (B)
a) natural gas, oil, coal, nuclear, hydro
b) oil, coal, natural gas, nuclear, hydro
c) oil, natural gas, coal, hydro, nuclear
d) coil, oil, natural gas, hydro, nuclear
5. A reasonable estimate for Q∞ (petroleum) for the United States, including Alaska and offshore oil, is about
a) 324×109 bbl
b) 250×106 bbl
c) 113×109 bbl
d) 420×109 bbl (Ans(200 used + 220 remaining)
e) 55×109 bbl
f) 113×106 bbl
g) 165×108 bbl
h) unknown
6. The total annual energy consumption in the United States is about ___ QBtu, and this is the equivalent of about ___ tons of coal per year for each person.
a) 80, 10
b) 800, 130
c) 8000, 1.4
d) 98, 13 ans
7. One of the problems of producing shale oil is the amount of water needed for aboveground retorting. The engineers designing this process estimate that about ___ barrels of water are needed for each barrel of oil produced.
a) 300
b) 30
c) 3 ans
d) 0.3
8. In tar sands, the organic material that contains the oil and that surrounds the grains of sand is
a) kerogen
b) kerosene
c) marlstone
d) bitumen ans
e) paraffin
9. The energy content of the recoverable conventional fossil fuels remaining in the United States are in the ratio of approximately ___ to ___ to ___ for petroleum, natural gas, and coal, respectively.
a) 1, 1.8, 5.6 ans
b) 1, 0.5, 15
c) 1, 0.75, 58
d) 1, 0.2, 150
e) 1, 3, 150
f) 1, 0.2, 28
g) 1, 1, 98
h) 1, 1, 1
10. The coal that we burn in our power plants today represents solar energy trapped in organic molecules about ___ years ago.
a) 300,000
b) 3,000,000
c) 300,000,000 ans
d) 3,000,000,000
11. As compared to coal, oil shale of good quality has about ___ as much energy content per ton of excavated material.
a) one-eighth 3.5e6 btu/ton / 27e6 btu/ton
b) ten times
c) one-hundredth
d) one-half
e) twice
12. The estimated total minable coal in the United States is about
a) 0.5×109 tons
b) 1.5×1012 tons
c) 0.5×1012 tons ans
d) 250×109 tons -0%
13. The United States is currently importing about ___ barrels of oil each year at a cost of roughly 45 dollars per barrel.
a) 1×103
b) 1×106
c) 3×109 ans
d) 4×106
e) 6×109
f) 6×106
g) 9×109
h) 9×106
14. Natural gas consists mostly of ___, and to some extent ___.
a) propane, ethane
b) butane, ethane
c) propane, methane
d) methane, ethane ans
15. The United States is using liquid petroleum at the rate of about
a) 6×109 gal/day
b) 6×109 bbl/day
c) 6×109 gal/year
d) 6×109 bbl/year ans
16. The oil that we burn in our cars today represents solar energy that was captured in organic molecules about ___ years ago.
a) 200,000
b) 2,000,000
c) 200,000,000 ans
d) 2,000,000,000
17. At our present rate of use, the estimated total remaining recoverable petroleum of the United States would supply our needs for about ___ years.
a) 20
b) 8
c) 36 ans
d) 172
18. The average percentage of the total petroleum left in the ground after primary and secondary recovery has been accomplished is about
a) 30%
b) 20%
c) 10%
d) 5%
e) 70% ans
f) 90%
g) 50%
h) 0%
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