Formation of fossil fuels
Fossil fuels exist because organic matter has undergone a process of decomposition over thousands of years. This matter comes from the remains of organisms that once lived on planet Earth, such as plants or animals.
Living beings that inhabited the planet millions of years ago left organic remains that have subsequently been covered by layers of sediment. The high pressure and temperature exerted by these layers ceo email lists on the organic matter cause a natural process of fossilization in anoxia (absence of oxygen). This process, carried out over millions of years, ended up transforming the original matter into other organic substances that have different states: solid in the case of coal, liquid in the case of oil or gaseous in the case of natural gas.
As the speed at which these resources are consumed is much greater than the speed at which they are regenerated, once the current fossil fuels are consumed we will have to wait millions of years for the necessary reserves to regenerate.
Types of fuels: coal, oil and gas
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Coal
Coal is a mineral fossil fuel originating from plant remains , of which there are several types: peat, lignite, hard coal and anthracite. It is in the form of a rock and is rich in carbon, with varying amounts of hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen and nitrogen.
Most of the coal we use today was composed during the Carboniferous period, which began 359 million years ago.
Its applications are diverse: from transport to heating . The problem with coal has always been the same: the existing quantity of this material is finite and its use generates a great deal of pollution, especially CO2, during its extraction and its burning to obtain energy.
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Oil
Petroleum is a fossil fuel made up of hydrocarbons that are insoluble in water (hydrogen and carbon) and is mainly used to produce gasoline, diesel, fuel oil, asphalt and plastics. Petroleum is transformed in refineries to be used as a source of energy. Liquefied petroleum gases
can also be obtained , especially butane and propane, obtained by refining petroleum and which have many applications, for example, in the automotive sector. It is found in the form of large pockets in the upper strata of the earth's crust and to obtain it requires excavating from 600 to 5,000 meters. As in the case of coal, its extraction and use causes a lot of pollution.
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Natural gas
Natural gas is found underground, extracted by drilling and stored in containers to be transported to gas pipelines. It is the cleanest fossil energy in terms of waste and atmospheric emissions.
It is mainly composed of methane and other alkanes and also has small percentages of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide and helium.
