Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Yet it would be more correct to call it the fossil fuel age, since coal remains a much-utilised
(and indeed growing) fuel for electricity production, and natural gas, the most recently
harnessed of the fossil fuels, could soon rival oil in importance. A mixture of methane,
butane, propane and other hydrocarbons, natural gas occurs either alongside mineral oil or
dissolvedwithinit.Likeoil,naturalgashasbeenknowntohumansformillennia,butitwas
even harder to utilise because of its form and volatility. The earliest known use of natural
gas was in China during the Han dynasty (200 BCE), when it was siphoned from shallow
underground pockets using bamboo tubing and used to boil seawater for salt production.
The first industrial-scale gaseous fuel was not natural gas, but town gas, a synthetic
derivative of coal. Much of the street and domestic lighting in European and North
American cities of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was provided by town
gas. Gasworks were an iconic feature of many industrialised towns and cities until the
1960s, by which time town gas had been largely replaced by electricity and natural gas.
Three innovations were needed before natural gas could become a major household and
industrial fuel: development of safe burners for mixing gas and air, wider high-pressure
pipelines, and gas compression. Though a relative latecomer to the energy mix, natural
gas has become the preferred fuel of the modern age for heating, cooking and electricity
generation.
Energy at the Flick of a Switch
One could argue that we are still living through the Industrial Revolution, as most of our
energy is still generated by burning fossil fuels. The main difference today is that we have
added a new link to the energy conversion chain: electricity. The industrial generation
of electricity represents an energy revolution in its own right. While the ancient Greeks
had some understanding of electricity, as reflected in the origin of the term, it remained a
scientific curiosity until the early nineteenth century. Thanks to the work of scientists such
as Michael Faraday and Thomas Edison, electrical power was generated and harnessed for
a variety of purposes.
Faraday led the way by discovering electrical induction; that a magnet moving within
a copper coil will generate electrical current. This paved the way for the first electrical
turbines, capable of converting mechanical to electrical energy. Edison's contribution to
the development of electricity was even more profound. Like James Watt, Edison was
both a scientist and a businessman. This gave him a strong incentive to develop machines
for generating electricity and to provide a commercial system to transmit and distribute
it. Edison built and operated the first power station in the United States, and he invented
numerous devices capable of using electrical current, most famously the incandescent
lightbulb.
