It's no secret that the resources used by humanity today are finite, moreover, their further extraction and use can lead not only to energy, but also to environmental disaster. The resources traditionally used by mankind - coal, gas and oil - will run out in a few decades, and measures must be taken now, in our time. Of course, we can hope that we will again find some rich deposit, just as it was in the first half of the last century, but scientists are sure that such large deposits no longer exist. But in any case, even the discovery of new deposits will only delay the inevitable, it is necessary to find ways to produce alternative energy and switch to renewable resources such as wind, sun, geothermal energy, water flow energy and others, and along with this, it is necessary to continue developing energy-saving technologies.
In this article, we will consider some of the most promising, in the opinion of modern scientists, ideas on which the energy of the future will be built.
Solar stations
People have long wondered whether it is possible to use energysun on earth. Water was heated under the sun, clothes and pottery were dried before being sent to the oven, but these methods cannot be called effective. The first technical means that convert solar energy appeared in the 18th century. The French scientist J. Buffon showed an experiment in which he managed to ignite a dry tree with the help of a large concave mirror in clear weather from a distance of about 70 meters. His compatriot, the famous scientist A. Lavoisier, used lenses to concentrate the energy of the sun, and in England they created biconvex glass, which, by focusing the sun's rays, melted cast iron in just a few minutes.
Natural scientists conducted many experiments that proved that the use of solar energy on earth is possible. However, a solar battery that would convert solar energy into mechanical energy appeared relatively recently, in 1953. It was created by scientists from the US National Aerospace Agency. Already in 1959, a solar battery was first used to equip a space satellite.
Perhaps even then, realizing that such batteries are much more efficient in space, scientists came up with the idea of creating space solar stations, because in an hour the sun generates as much energy as all of humanity does not consume in a year, so why not use This? What will be the solar energy of the future?
On the one hand, it seems that the use of solar energy is an ideal option. However, the cost of a huge space solar station is very high, and besides, it will be expensive to operate. Sotime, when new technologies for the delivery of goods into space, as well as new materials, will be introduced, the implementation of such a project will become possible, but for now we can only use relatively small batteries on the surface of the planet. Many will say that this is also good. Yes, it is possible in the conditions of a private house, but for the energy supply of large cities, accordingly, either a lot of solar panels are needed, or a technology that will make them more efficient.
The economic side of the issue is also present here: any budget will suffer greatly if it is entrusted with the task of converting an entire city (or an entire country) to solar panels. It would seem that it is possible to oblige the inhabitants of cities to pay some amounts for re-equipment, but in this case they will be unhappy, because if people were ready to make such expenses, they would have done it themselves long ago: everyone has the opportunity to buy a solar battery.
There is another paradox regarding solar energy: production costs. Converting solar energy into electricity directly is not the most efficient thing. So far, no better way has been found than to use the sun's rays to heat water, which, turning into steam, in turn rotates a dynamo. In this case, the energy loss is minimal. Humanity wants to use "green" solar panels and solar stations to conserve resources on earth, but such a project would require a huge amount of the same resources, and "non-green" energy. For example, in France, a solar power plant was recently built, covering an area of about two square kilometers. The cost of construction was about 110 million euros, not including operating costs. With all this, it should be borne in mind that the service life of such mechanisms is about 25 years.
Wind
Wind energy has also been used by people since antiquity, the simplest example being sailing and windmills. Windmills are still in use today, especially in areas with constant winds, such as on the coast. Scientists are constantly putting forward ideas on how to modernize existing devices for converting wind energy, one of them is wind turbines in the form of soaring turbines. Due to the constant rotation, they could "hang" in the air at a distance of several hundred meters from the ground, where the wind is strong and constant. This would help in the electrification of rural areas where the use of standard windmills is not possible. In addition, such soaring turbines could be equipped with Internet modules, which would provide people with access to the World Wide Web.
Tides and waves
The boom in solar and wind energy is gradually fading, and other natural energy has attracted the interest of researchers. More promising is the use of ebbs and flows. Already, about a hundred companies around the world are dealing with this issue, and there are several projects that have proven the effectiveness of this mining method.electricity. The advantage over solar energy is that the losses during the transfer of one energy to another are minimal: the tidal wave rotates a huge turbine, which generates electricity.
Project Oyster is the idea of installing a hinged valve at the bottom of the ocean that will bring water to the shore, thereby turning a simple hydroelectric turbine. Just one such installation could provide electricity to a small microdistrict.
Already, tidal waves are successfully used in Australia: in the city of Perth, desalination plants operating on this type of energy have been installed. Their work allows to provide about half a million people with fresh water. Natural energy and industry can also be combined in this energy production industry.
The use of tidal energy is somewhat different from the technologies we are used to seeing in river hydroelectric power plants. Often, hydroelectric power plants harm the environment: adjacent territories are flooded, the ecosystem is destroyed, but stations operating on tidal waves are much safer in this regard.
Human Energy
One of the most fantastic projects on our list can be called the use of the energy of living people. It sounds stunning and even somewhat terrifying, but not everything is so scary. Scientists cherish the idea of how to use the mechanical energy of movement. These projects focus on microelectronics and nanotechnologies with low power consumption. While it sounds like a utopia, there are no real developments, but the idea is veryinteresting and does not leave the minds of scientists. Agree, very convenient will be devices that, like watches with automatic winding, will be charged from the fact that the sensor is swiped with a finger, or from the fact that a tablet or phone simply dangles in a bag when walking. Not to mention clothes that, filled with various microdevices, could convert the energy of human movement into electricity.
At Berkeley, in Lawrence's laboratory, for example, scientists tried to realize the idea of using viruses to convert pressure energy into electricity. There are also small mechanisms powered by movement, but so far such technology has not been put on stream. Yes, the global energy crisis cannot be de alt with in this way: how many people will have to "peddle" to make the whole plant work? But as one of the measures used in combination, the theory is quite viable.
Especially such technologies will be effective in hard-to-reach places, at polar stations, in the mountains and taiga, among travelers and tourists who do not always have the opportunity to charge their gadgets, but staying in touch is important, especially if the group got into critical situation. How much could be prevented if people always had a reliable communication device that did not depend on the "plug".
Hydrogen fuel cells
Perhaps every car owner, looking at the indicator of the amount of gasoline approaching zero, hadthe thought of how great it would be if the car ran on water. But now its atoms have come to the attention of scientists as real objects of energy. The fact is that the particles of hydrogen - the most common gas in the universe - contain a huge amount of energy. Moreover, the engine burns this gas with virtually no by-products, which means we get a very environmentally friendly fuel.
Hydrogen is fueled by some ISS modules and shuttles, but on Earth it exists mainly in the form of compounds such as water. In the eighties in Russia there were developments of aircraft using hydrogen as fuel, these technologies were even put into practice, and experimental models proved their effectiveness. When hydrogen is separated, it moves to a special fuel cell, after which electricity can be generated directly. This is not the energy of the future, this is already a reality. Similar cars are already being produced and in fairly large batches. Honda, in order to emphasize the versatility of the energy source and the car as a whole, conducted an experiment as a result of which the car was connected to the electrical home network, but not in order to get recharged. A car can power a private home for several days, or travel almost five hundred kilometers without refueling.
The only drawback of such an energy source at the moment is the relatively high cost of such environmentally friendly cars, and, of course, a fairly small number of hydrogen stations, but many countries are already planning to build them. For example, inGermany already has a plan to install 100 filling stations by 2017.
Heat of the earth
Turning thermal energy into electricity is the essence of geothermal energy. In some countries where it is difficult to use other industries, it is used quite widely. For example, in the Philippines, 27% of all electricity comes from geothermal plants, while in Iceland this figure is about 30%. The essence of this method of energy production is quite simple, the mechanism is similar to a simple steam engine. Before the alleged "lake" of magma, it is necessary to drill a well through which water is supplied. Upon contact with hot magma, water instantly turns into steam. It rises where it spins a mechanical turbine, thereby generating electricity.
The future of geothermal energy is to find large "stores" of magma. For example, in the aforementioned Iceland, they succeeded: in a fraction of a second, hot magma turned all the pumped water into steam at a temperature of about 450 degrees Celsius, which is an absolute record. Such high-pressure steam can increase the efficiency of a geothermal plant by several times, it can become an impetus for the development of geothermal energy around the world, especially in areas saturated with volcanoes and thermal springs.
Use of nuclear waste
Nuclear energy, at one time, made a splash. So it was until people realized the danger of this industryenergy. Accidents are possible, no one is immune from such cases, but they are very rare, but radioactive waste appears steadily and until recently, scientists could not solve this problem. The fact is that uranium rods - the traditional "fuel" of nuclear power plants, can only be used by 5%. After working out this small part, the entire rod is sent to the "landfill".
Previously, a technology was used in which the rods were immersed in water, which slows down neutrons, maintaining a steady reaction. Now liquid sodium has been used instead of water. This replacement allows not only to use the entire volume of uranium, but also to process tens of thousands of tons of radioactive waste.
It is important to rid the planet of nuclear waste, but there is one "but" in the technology itself. Uranium is a resource, and its reserves on Earth are finite. If the entire planet is switched exclusively to energy received from nuclear power plants (for example, in the United States, nuclear power plants produce only 20% of all electricity consumed), uranium reserves will be depleted quite quickly, and this will again lead humanity to the threshold of an energy crisis, so nuclear energy, albeit modernized, only a temporary measure.
Vegetable fuel
Even Henry Ford, having created his "Model T", expected that it would already run on biofuels. However, at that time, new oil fields were discovered, and the need for alternative energy sources disappeared for several decades, but nowback again.
Over the past fifteen years, the use of vegetable fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel has increased several times over. They are used as independent sources of energy, and as additives to gasoline. Some time ago, hopes were pinned on a special millet culture, called "canola". It is completely unsuitable for human or livestock food, but it has a high oil content. From this oil they began to produce "biodiesel". But this crop will take up too much space if you try to grow enough of it to fuel at least part of the planet.
Now scientists are talking about the use of algae. Their oil content is about 50%, which will make it just as easy to extract the oil, and the waste can be turned into fertilizers, on the basis of which new algae will be grown. The idea is considered interesting, but its viability has not yet been proven: the publication of successful experiments in this area has not yet been published.
Fusion
The future energy of the world, according to modern scientists, is impossible without thermonuclear fusion technologies. This is currently the most promising development in which billions of dollars are already being invested.
Nuclear power plants use fission energy. It is dangerous because there is a threat of an uncontrolled reaction that will destroy the reactor and lead to the release of a huge amount of radioactive substances: perhaps everyone remembers the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
In fusion reactions thatAs the name implies, the energy released during the fusion of atoms is used. As a result, unlike atomic fission, no radioactive waste is produced.
The main problem is that as a result of fusion, a substance is formed that has such a high temperature that it can destroy the entire reactor.
This energy of the future is a reality. And fantasies are inappropriate here, at the moment the construction of the reactor has already begun in France. Several billion dollars have been invested in a pilot project funded by many countries, which, in addition to the EU, include China and Japan, the USA, Russia and others. Initially, the first experiments were planned to be launched as early as 2016, but calculations showed that the budget was too small (instead of 5 billion, it took 19), and the launch was postponed for another 9 years. Perhaps in a few years we will see what fusion power is capable of.
Challenges of the present and opportunities for the future
Not only scientists, but also science fiction writers give a lot of ideas for the implementation of future technology in energy, but everyone agrees that so far none of the proposed options can fully meet all the needs of our civilization. For example, if all cars in the United States run on biofuels, canola fields would have to cover an area equal to half the entire country, regardless of the fact that there is not so much land suitable for agriculture in the States. Moreover, so far all methods of production alternative energy - roads. Perhaps every ordinary city dweller agrees that it is important to use environmentally friendly, renewable resources, but not when they are told the cost of such a transition at the moment. Scientists still have a lot of work to do in this area. New discoveries, new materials, new ideas - all this will help humanity to successfully cope with the looming resource crisis. The energy problem of the planet can be solved only by comprehensive measures. In some areas, it is more convenient to use wind power generation, somewhere - solar panels, and so on. But perhaps the main factor will be the reduction of energy consumption in general and the creation of energy-saving technologies. Each person must understand that he is responsible for the planet, and each must ask himself the question: "What kind of energy do I choose for the future?" Before moving on to other resources, everyone should realize that this is really necessary. Only with an integrated approach will it be possible to solve the problem of energy consumption.
