• What are energy resources?
• Importance of energy resources
• Non-renewable energy resources
• Renewable energy resources
• The nuclear energy

We explain what are renewable and non-renewable energy resources. Also, its importance and what is nuclear energy.

From industry to cooking food require energy resources.

What are energy resources?

Energy resources are the set of substances that can be used as a source of Energy, through different processes of a physical or chemical nature discovered by the human being. It is a type of substance that generally has a natural origin, but through the industry allow to obtain energy, especially electric power Y caloric.

Energy resources can be of a very different nature and require different processes to release their contained energy. Even, from a certain perspective, food that we eat are an energy resource for our organism, because through its digestion we obtain the chemical energy necessary to continue living.

It is not the same to talk about energy sources as it is about energy resources. More than anything because energy sources are events, dynamics or cycles of the nature that are constantly emitting usable energy, such as Sun, or that can indirectly be used to obtain it, such as winds or falls of Water.

Unlike energy sources, energy resources are characterized by the fact that they require the transformation of the matter to release the energy contained within.

Importance of energy resources

Energy resources are used for all kinds of everyday tasks.

In the contemporary world, energy is one of the most precious goods in the world. humanity, since it can promote all kinds of industries that make our lives easier and more enjoyable, or that allow us to continue discovering new technologies.

In addition, with it we can mobilize transport, heat our homes when it is cold (or cool them when it is too heat), cook our food or light up our dark nights.

Therefore, resources capable of providing energy are key today. Many of the world's political, social or economic dilemmas lie precisely in the struggles to have control over them.

Non-renewable energy resources

Coal is one of the energy resources that can be depleted.

Non-renewable energy resources are, as their name implies, those that are consumed when used. Their stocks are not easy to replenish, so one day they will run out and disappear. Some because their quantities in the world are limited, and others because their source processes are so slow or so difficult that it is not possible to create them at the rate at which they are consumed.

Some examples of non-renewable energy resources are:

• The Petroleum. Formed over billions of years, from organic material from microorganisms decomposing and buried underground at enormous pressures Y temperaturesThis substance of fossil origin has an enormous energy capacity and is also a source of numerous chemical derivatives useful to humanity.
• The mineral coal. Of similar origin to oil, but related to immense deposits of fossilized ancient wood in the subsoil, it is also an important source of energy as fuel, and many of the world's energy industries depend on their exploitation.
• The natural gas. Another fuel of fossil origin is a gas rich in hydrocarbons that is normally found in deposits in the subsoil, or even in oil fields in different proportions. It is basically a volatile mixture of gases light.

Renewable energy resources

Biomass is plant organic matter that can be used as fuel.

On the contrary, renewable energy resources are those that do not run the risk stocks should end in the foreseeable future, given that they are either superabundant or can be obtained through relatively simple and fast processes.

Some examples of renewable energy resources are:

• The biomass. Is about organic material of vegetable and animal origin that, accumulated and subjected to the appropriate chemical and physical treatments, can become biofuels, such as bioethanol, biodiesel or biogasoil.
• Hydrogen. The element most abundant of the universe known and also the simplest, it is a possible source of energy if it is possible to control the nuclear fusion process that, within the stars themselves, causes an immense liberation of light and energy. This is, in fact, the energy resource of our Sun and it is a technology still in research.

The nuclear energy

Nuclear energy can be used for peaceful or military purposes.

Nuclear energy is that which consists in the exploitation of the chemical energy contained in the atoms themselves, through the transformation of one element into others.

It is a process that can be used for peaceful purposes (as in nuclear power plants) or for war purposes (as in nuclear power plants). atomic bombs). It represents one of the great achievements of modern physics in the 20th century.

Nuclear energy uses energy resources of different types, depending on the physical process that sustains it:

• Fission. It is the division of heavy materials such as certain isotopes of uranium and cesium, which, although they are rare, could with effort be manufactured in a laboratory.
• Fusion. It is the union of light atoms such as hydrogen or helium, imitating what happens as a result of the gravity in the heart of the stars themselves.

So far we have mastered atomic fission, but not fusion.