Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

For many years coal and oil have been used as energy sources. Currently oil is the dominant source of energy, but experts predict that in a few decades it will no longer be profitable. Burning fossil fuels generates atmospheric contaminants that give rise to the greenhouse effect that artificially warms the earth, damages the earth ozone layer, and produces acid rain, all of which are very dangerous for living beings. As a consequence, abnormal phenomena such as the melting of glaciers, changes in the Gulf Stream, unprecedented heat waves, floods, hurricanes, and damage to marine organisms are now occurring. Although there are many skeptics, there is a general consensus that the earth is warming up. In order to reduce CO and other greenhouse gas emissions, the extensive use of alternative and cleaner sources of energy have been proposed, including CO emission-free nuclear energy and other alternative sources, among which are hydraulic, hydrogen, solar, eolic, biomass and geothermal. Another future alternative is to use methane hydrates, which have clean combustion and are believed to have considerable, still-unexplored reserves. It is also important to implement measures to improve energy efficiency for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In this paper we review present and future energy sources, including both primary non-renewable and alternative sources of energy. There is still time to take corrective measures by replacing some polluting fuels with clean sources of energy that can contribute to inherit a clean and sustainable world for future generations.

It is useful to look back into the past when trying to understand the present, and when attempting to analyze the future, particularly in the case of energy, whose role in development has been and will continue to be fundamental.

One of the major challenges for research in the future is to provide energy on a world wide scale against the background of vanishing resources, climatic changes and economic impact based on novel fuels and new technologies.

The above sentence can be read immediately below the heading “Energy Efficiency Is Top Priority” in the International Energy Agency report “Energy Technology Perspectives — Scenarios and Strategies to 2050”, published in 2006. The report was elaborated at the request of the G8 to provide advice on alternative scenarios and strategies for a clean and secure energy future.

Based on documental references, this paper enumerates and briefly describes Mexico’s main energy conservation programs and institutions, highlighting the main elements and factors for their success. These programs and institutions have been in place since the end of the 1980’s, have been generally successful and are certainly the main drivers for a significant reduction of the country’s energy intensity in the last twenty five years. The document also describes some of the barriers and challenges for future energy conservation policies.

Mexico has a major challenge to go from being an emergent economy to an industrialized country. Its electrical installed capacity has been growing during the last 10 years with a 4.5 % annual pace and it is planned to grow for the next 10 years with a 5.2 % annual pace. In 2005 the annual electrical consumption per inhabitant was of 2237 kWh, which is around the world’s average. This represents almost one quarter of the average of the industrial countries consumption. The current document shows the prospective for the Mexican electricity sector for the 2005–2014 time frame. It also shows the technologies that will be used to cover the requirements of electricity by region.

This work presents a thermo-economic study of combined-cycle gas turbine (CCGT) facilities based on a flexible genetic algorithm search technique. The results here presented will maximize the cash flow by pointing out the correct parameter values for plant design when the turbines have already been chosen among the existing commercial options.

Carbon dioxide is considered to be the major source of greenhouse gases responsible for global warming; man-made CO contributes approximately 63.5 % to all greenhouse gases. Efforts towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions have increased in the past few years, offering promising alternatives in power generation and better fuel efficiency. However, the incorporation of these new technologies to our daily lives represents a big challenge to be solved in the mid- to long-term, leaving separation and CO sequestration to be an immediate priority for researchers. CO capture and storage can support the transition of our fossil fuel based energy supply towards a sustainable energy system, based upon nuclear and renewable sources. Our present energy infrastructure will largely remain the same during this transition period. For example, electric power plants will be equipped with CO capture units, but will produce the same electricity, transported and distributed over the same grid. The first step in the CO capture and storage chain is to capture carbon in a high concentration. This can be done before or after combustion of the fuel. Capture is best carried out at large sources of emissions, such as power stations, refineries and other industrial complexes. There are several ways to capture CO, some of the main methods are absorbents using solvents or solid sorbents, which have been used in industry for several years and seems to be the most feasible solution at this time; membranes have also become an interesting alternative and although extensive research is in progress, new materials for membranes have yet to be discovered. Other methods like pressure- and temperature-swing adsorption using various solid sorbents, cryogenic distillation and new emerging technologies show promising results in the bench testing scale. This report presents a comparison between these different methods.

World energy demand has been increasing continuously with human development and the increase of world population. An increase of energy consumption is forecasted to rise by 50 % in the next three decades. Fossil resources — natural gas, coal and oil — are more widely used to supply consumers with this energy. At present time, fossil fuels continue to be the dominant energy source. Fossil resources supply almost 88 % of the total energy consumed in the world, followed by hydrodynamic (6.3 %) and nuclear (6 %). In spite of the development and use of other sources of energy such as nuclear, hydrodynamic and renewable sources, future energy supply will continue to rely on fossil resources, although with a lower relative utilization.

Nuclear power is a viable, economically competitive and safe option to contribute to the high electricity demand expected for the next decades. Nuclear energy is currently the largest source of electricity without emission of greenhouse gases. In several countries, for baseload electricity generation, the capacity factors of NPPs are the highest for any type of fuel and, at same time, except for hydroelectric power, production costs from nuclear power are the lowest. These two factors, among others, have led the nuclear power industry to become competitive today in the electricity generation market. However, public acceptance is still a major issue to overcome before nuclear power can be exploited to its fullest. Issues as nuclear plant security, waste management and reactor safety are constantly being debated by society, even when such issues have been shown to have technically sound solutions. In particular, NPP safety will be discussed in this work.

Although safe operation of current nuclear plants is at its highest level, misinformation and lack of understanding of the physical fundamentals on nuclear reactor design and operation have led general public opinion to still show concerns regarding nuclear reactor safety. In this work, it is presented a short description of the fundamental physical principles behind the safety core and plant design and operation of BWRs, with the intention of helping to better understand and clarify concepts of frequent use in the nuclear engineering and safety areas.