Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
23
Vegetable oils are twenty times more viscous than diesel.
24
Enzymes that digest wood are used by the microbes that live in termite intestines or the
wood-decomposing fungi that thrive on tree trunks.
25
In 2012 Exxon drilled the world's deepest well (12,376 metres) in the Chayvo oil
field in eastern Russia. This is almost 2 kilometres deeper than BP's infamous Deepwater
Horizon well that spilled 800 million litres of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
26
Mainly thorium 232, uranium 238, and potassium 40.
27
GHP efficiency is theoretically high as with all electrical devices (up to 90 per cent),
but real efficiency must take into account that electricity is normally bought from the grid,
where electricity is produced through fossil fuel-based conventional plants that have an
efficiency of 30-40 per cent.
28
Notably Germany, Papua New Guinea, Australia, Turkey, Iceland, Portugal, New
29
King Canute, or Cnut the Great, was king of England from 1016 to 1035. Legend has
it that Canute commanded the tide to turn back. Chroniclers have interpreted this as an act
of either foolish arrogance or of piety (to demonstrate the limits of worldly power).
30
As the moon orbits the Earth, it draws water away from the Earth's surface. The water
masses facing the moon are attracted, causing high tide, while on the opposite side of
the Earth, water is drawn away from the surface by centrifugal force (of the Earth-Moon
system), causing what are known as tidal bulges. Low tides occur because, as the waters
are drawn into the two bulges they must recede at the points least affected by the moon's
gravity.
31
An ion exchange membrane is a semipermeable membrane designed to conduct ions
while being impermeable to other substances such as water or gases. In normal conditions,
positive and negative ions would mix into the solution, whereas this semipermeable
