NATS 1840 Lecture 10: Lecture Notes (Feb 28)
3 Mar 2017
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Document Summary
Net energy: includes information about how much energy must be expended to obtain energy from a given resource, net energy = total energy obtained from resource, energy needed to nd, extract, process, and deliver the resource. Energy return on investment: eroi = delivered energy / energy needed to nd, extract, process, and deliver the resource, low net energy means little new energy given investment, negative net energy isn"t sensible. Conventional petroleum: looks like a very viscous liquid, exists and ows within porous rock. Solution: horizontal drilling allows for a small surface footprint while still reaching a large underground volume, this is a less disruptive approach, another dramatic solution is the forbid oil and gas exploration. Using steam also lowers viscosity from the material and gets it off walls to be extracted: this still leaves about half the oil down in the ground. We can only get half of it out before it gets too expensive to get the rest out.
