History of Energy Technologies

HempCloud -- 07/11/2011 02:47 PM —

Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be transferred. Humanity’s ability to manipulate and control energy was the first and most vital step in our modern evolution. Since our first foray into harnessing energy with fire, we’ve been on an unending quest for ever more energy. It can be argued that the evolution of modern humans was largely shaped by our energy consumption and there is little doubt that our ability to harness energy will play a pivotal role in our ability to continue making advances.

Wood

While early humans only needed enough energy to sustain our daily activities, once control of fire was learned, we tried to find new ways energy could be used to improve our lives.

After our initial breakthrough with fire, the next evolution came with the birth of agricultural man. The energy needed to plow the earth and grow food would have certainly increased his need for energy at least twice as much again, if not more, and hence he began to use domestic animals to bear the burden. To feed his relentless fuel consumption, early man now had to add food for his livestock.

As man began to depend on animals for energy to help build his world, there is no doubt that he also began to look at the elements around him, such as the wind, sun, and water. They are all in perpetual motion; a constant state of energy that only needed to be tapped into once a way was created. Ancient Egyptians used mirrors to reflect the sun’s warming rays into the deep, dark, cold corners of their living spaces. Their use of mirrors would even rival today’s use of architectural design like none other. Sailors learned how to harness the wind, facilitating them in their quest for new lands around the world. While sailors use nuclear energy today, the wind is still harnessed to provide energy to all walks of life – from the individual, to communities, to air travel.

It wasn’t until the Industrial Age that man really started to plow forward in his eternal quest for the ultimate source of energy. The truth is that there is not one single source of energy that will satisfy all our needs, but a combination of them all will get us where we are going. Although wood, animals, and the sun were merely stepping stones in the right direction, steam is one source of energy that would pave the way into the Industrial Age, leading mankind forward in leaps and bounds.

Industrial Age

Starting in roughly 1875, the invention of the steam engine by Thomas Savery and Thomas Newcomen brought new and amazing ways to power the world. Steam engines ran trains that took people across their country to settle unknown regions, uniting continents and offering more and more opportunities for progress. Steam engines ran ships that traversed the oceans in record time, opening up new cultures and even more possibilities of different kinds. But the real gift was the ability to run engines that would allow man to tap into the earth’s vast potential of hidden energy, such as coal, gas, and oil. No longer limited to surface materials, mankind now had enough power and strength to reach beyond himself and utilize energy sources that were not even known before the advent of the steam engine. [1] [2]

While the increased need for energy was in the beginning, gradual over time, the entrance of the Industrial Age must have tripled man’s consumption by comparison. Interdependent relationships between the steam engine, the iron industry, and coal mining have lead the way to advancements in steam technology such that by the late 1800s steam engines took over powering the English textile mills.

Before that, water wheels were the main source of power, but they were limited geographically, and if a drought, flood, ice, or any other interruption came along, water wheels would stop. Steam engines were able to run 24 hours a day, from any location, as long as wood or coal was fed into them. Philadelphia resident Oliver Evans successfully placed a patent on a high-pressure steam engine that eventually evolved into the ones that powered the riverboats and railroads that characteristically defined the expansion into the Wild West. [3]

Coal and Electricity

Even though European countries utilized coal before 1800, the use of coal to power the steam engine marked another giant leap forward that also created an entire industry based on the need for coal. By the 1850s, Appalachian coal replaced wood as the fuel used to power steam. On the West coast, coal was not so easy to come by and at times had to be imported from as far away as Australia. This limitation, coupled with the high costs and the discovery of oil in southern California led to the use of oil as a source of fuel, slowly replacing coal-fed steam during the first half of the 20th century.

Around these same times, the end of the 18th century, electricity had also captured the fascination of people and started to grow in their hearts and minds. The evolution of power was irreversibly changed with the development of electromagnetic induction, electricity passing through copper wires, and the development of electric motors. Electricity was often times produced by generators that ran on coal, so these two brothers in energy helped shape the world probably more than anything else at that time.

This production of electricity could now be generated from far-away hydroelectric and steam-turbine power plants, and transported by wire to the manufacturing machines, windmills, and waterwheels that previously ran on wood and coal. This greatly improved efficiency as coal furnaces had to be fed around the clock, while industry was now free to drink from the tap of electricity at will, while only a fraction of the manpower was needed to maintain the supply.

This new freedom allowed industry to spring up everywhere, factories could now be placed in strategic locations, and the dirty, noisy, high-maintenance coal machines gave way to the clean, quiet, zero-maintenance electricity. The nighttime was now opened up like never before with the advent of street lights. The noxious fumes and explosive natures of other fuels were now being replaced with the much safer and less damaging current that seemed to be in an endless supply, finding its way into the businesses, homes, and streets around the world.

Thomas Edison’s incandescent lamp that was unleashed in the 1880s, was instrumental in winning over the everyday man on his quest for energy. His Pearl Street generating system in Manhattan became the prototype for electric distribution across the country and around the world. In this early film about the many uses of electricity, you will see how electricity grabbed people’s attention, and never let go.

While electricity was forging its own path around the world, coal still held – and still does hold – a predominate position. The last half of the 19th century still had a need for coal to fuel the many trains still in operation, trains that could still find large amounts of it along the trails of train tracks. Many still prefer coal because of its higher energy content. To this day, coal still supplies energy to many industries because of its higher fuel content and lower cost, and the fact that it is produced domestically.

New technologies have made it possible to burn coal, and still leave an acceptable carbon footprint that meets government guidelines. However, since few of us come into contact with coal, and our daily lives are run by electricity, electricity wins the popularity contest.

Petroleum

Coal was still highly visible until after WWII when petroleum was found to be much cheaper, and more readily supplied from both domestic and foreign sources. Railroads converted to diesel engines and opened up the door for a new industry called trucking, which offered not only more opportunities, but a much better cost for our transportation needs.

Petroleum gained widespread use in the 1920s with the discovery of oil in various parts of the U.S., as well as overseas. Its use climbed steadily over the years, slowed down only by the Depression of 1929, then resumed its radical rise until the oil embargo of 1973. No other energy – wood, coal, electric or even nuclear power – has ever grown so quickly, and held its lead so strongly, as did oil during these time periods of 1920 to 1973.

Once the oil embargo hit, America was scrambling to find a replacement to this black gold that would still allow us to continue the standards of energy consumption that we have grown to enjoy. This forced reality led the way to the discovery and use of nuclear power, and the rediscovery of natural gas.

Nuclear and Natural Gas

Natural gas had been around since before recorded time, but its uses were largely found to be used on the smaller scale, powering individual homes and a few street lamps. It was unusual to find natural gas powering commercial uses because its transportation was challenging. It either had to be bottled or transported through gas lines that were not very cost effective to run over long distances. For this reason, natural gas remained a local entity, but a viable one none the less that is still in use today.

As the size and efficiency of electric power plants grew, the cost of electricity dropped, which stimulated an even larger appetite for electricity. Fossil fuels were the easy choice at this time because of their inexpensive availability. However, the environmental movement of the 1960s demanded that we call out for cleaner fuel that would not leave such a damaged landscape in its wake. Oil spills, acid rain, and greenhouse gasses were starting to show themselves from the concentrated petroleum-based products being used at this time. So what does man do? He searches for alternatives.

Atomic Power

The search for alternatives to these fossil fuels would open the door to a relatively new technology that had been in use during Marie Curie’s day, with her work on the spontaneous radiation emitted by uranium compounds. The early 20th century held a prominent place with continual research on the atomic structure and physics. Italian physicist Enrich Fermi was leading the way among scientists during the 1930s as he focused on generating artificial radiation by bombarding uranium atoms with neutrons. [4]

His work was so valued, he won the Noble Peace Prize in 1938 and was allowed to leave his fascist Italian government to go receive it in Stockholm, Germany. But instead of retuning to the unstable Italy, he immigrated to America, where he took a professorship at Columbia University in New York. [5]

As the beginning of WWII came to pass, Fermi and his colleagues, including Albert Einstein, found that by splitting the uranium atom with a neutron, this would start a chain reaction that released an immeasurable amount of energy. They gave this process the name nuclear fission, and decided to work with the U.S. government about the possibilities of its military applications.

Here is a rather long clip (28 minutes), but an excellent one of declassified AEC film showing the power of these chain reactions, and how much energy they release.

In 1942, with this support, Fermi was able to produce a controlled nuclear fission chain reaction under the direction of Franklin D. Roosevelt, in the name of The Manhattan Project. This work lead directly to the production of the first atomic bomb, which was dropped on Japan in 1945, bringing WWII to a rapid finish. [6]

After these events, the U.S. government established what is now known as the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) that keeps tabs on all developments of nuclear weapons, and develops the use of atomic power for non-violent use. Among these peaceful applications, the AEC started working with public utility companies such as Pacific Gas and Electric Company in California during the 1950s to develop electric power generation using nuclear fission. With the swift success of WWII, America emerged as the leader of the free world, and nuclear power was sensationalized as the answer to all our problems. Leading world powers around the globe began developing their own nuclear power plants, for good and not so good reasons.

Then, following the 1979 disaster of 3 Mile Island, public option of nuclear power took a huge decline in support. This event, which was found to be based on human error, rallied nuclear opponents enough so that their voices slowed the acceptance of nuclear power almost to a halt. These issues, together with the question of what to do with nuclear waste as it was decomposing, slowed new power plant development in the U.S. to a standstill.

A similar nuclear disaster in Chernobyl, Ukraine also alerted Italy, Germany, and other European countries of widespread radiation poisoning. Recent improvements to the development of nuclear power have improved their image, and slowly re-introduced nuclear power as a source of good, clean, viable energy to meet our needs. Combined with wind, solar, and geothermal energy, they all stand poised to lead us into the 22nd century with very promising results. It is just a matter of time.

Sources:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Savery

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Newcomen

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Evans

4. http://www.fi.edu/learn/case-files/fermi/index.html

5. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1938/

6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project

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