The Need for Cleaner and Safer Energy Sources
Since the industrial revolution, society has depleted fossils fuels fasters than the generation of fuel. Oil, coal and natural gas offer a lot of energy when they are burned. Yet, the combustion of fossil fuels is slowly varying the atmosphere composition, with the climate change apparent. Moreover, fossil fuel extraction, refinement and transport generate numerous hazards in the environment and workplace. Renewable energy sources refill naturally without being exhausted in the ground include; hydropower, bioenergy, geothermal, solar energy, ocean (wave) energy and wind energy (Asumadu-Sarkodie and Owusu 2016a). Developing alternative sources of cleaner, safer and renewable energy is an objective of green chemistry. Changing the energy of the wind, sun or plant into a form appropriate for human use is a challenge (Panwar, Kaushik and Kothari 2011). A promising substitute to fossil fuel is fuel cell technology. In fact, the recent research on 3D anhydrous proton-transferring Nano channels designed by self-assemblage of liquid crystals composed of a sulfonic and sulfobetaine has attracted attention because of the potential application in fuels cells and lithium-ion batteries (Sakuda et al. 2015). Power from the fuels cells is cleaner, creating less than one per cent of the quantity of contaminant created by traditional power generation. Moreover, a methane gas, a byproduct of the human waste decomposition, has been used in fuels cells to efficiently produce electricity (Tiwary and Williams 2018). Thus, fuels cells are doubly appropriate for the earth, by changing a byproduct into useful energy and secondly, reducing effluence involved in making that energy. The technology has the prospect to advance energy efficiency, minimise greenhouse gas emissions and lessen air contamination matched with traditional combustions engines (Seinfeld and Pandis 2012). Researchers expect fuels cells will be important in several personal devices ranging from home furnaces and automobiles to cellular phones. The fuel cells are still too expensive and experimental to be practical for broader use. But, they are presently used to power NASA spacecraft, city buses and wastewater treatment plants.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have been main actors in progressing the biosphere understands stratospheric ozone reduction and styles. NASA retains satellites in numerous globe orbits and conducts study to get comprehensive, long-term arrays of ecological measurement about the globe. NASA has been active in evaluating the impacts of world aeronautics on the global air, data gathering and saved the use of ozone-depleting substance by 96%. NOAA defines the scope of exhaustion over Antarctica (the ozone hole), creates a ground-centered measurement of ozone in the stratosphere, and observes the gases accountable for reducing stratosphere ozone (Earth System Research Laboratory 2015). Its global networks of research points and scientists continue to take part in tracking and monitoring the recovery of the ozone layer.
Since the signing of the Montreal protocol on the substance on 1987, it was initial efforts to guard the stratospheric ozone. Under the protocol, the developed nations were needed to begin phasing out CFCs in 1993 and achieved a 50% reduction by 1998 (NASA 2018). Measurements by NASA’s Aura satellite, shows the chlorine decline, resulting from an worldwide veto on chlorine enclosing a man-made chemical called CFCs; which has caused in about 20% less ozone weakening through the Antarctic winter than there was in 2005 (NASA 2018). CFCs are a long-lived organic compound that ultimately rises into the stratosphere, where they are fragmented by sun’s UV radiation, discharging Cl particles that go on to rescind ozone bits. Earlier researches have used numerical evaluation of variation in the ozone hole scope to claim that ozone reduction is lessening. This research is the first to use the measurement of the chemical alignment inside the hole to approve that not merely reduction lessening, but that the drop is caused by the fading in CFCs.
To determine how ozone and other compound have reformed annually, researchers used statistics from the Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) onboard the Aura satellite, which has been creating measurement nonstop round the earth ever since mid-2004. While other satellites require rays to measure trace vapors, the MLS measures microwave emission over Antarctica in the key time of the year such when the temperature is low and stable, dark southern winter and when stratospheric weather is quiet. They established that ozone zone is declining, but they required identifying if the drop is associated with CFCs. By matching the MLS measurement of hydrochloric acid and nitrous oxide each annually, they determined that the entire chlorine intensities were reduced on mean of 0.8% (NASA 2018).
The result from the novel examination of NOAA atmospheric measurement explains why from 2014 to 2016, discharges of CFC-11 must have augmented by 25% beyond the normal measurement from 2002 to 2012 (Eleanor and Deborah 2018). According to NASA, the 2017 ozone hole, which emaciated, as they normally do, in September was the tiniest witnessed ever since 1988 (NASA 2018). So it was a ban on the CFCs that led to 2017’s trivial hole. Antarctica is the coolest place on the globe and the air overhead is also extremely icy. Ozone reduction functions best in the very icy air. The record international warmness in latest years means a warmer stratosphere above Antarctica, which result ostensibly minor ozone holes in 2016 and 2017 (NASA 2018).
- CFC management efforts
- A legislative framework such as production restriction and emission prevention, For instance, the ozone layer protection promulgated in May 1988 (Vienna connection and Montreal protocol, recovery and destruction (fluorocarbon recovery and destruction law), low recycling of specified kind of home appliances
- Cooperative work of competent national agencies
- Development of alternative technologies and substitute: development of new refrigerants, and research and development by private sectors.
- Refrigeration sector:
- Overview of local and national government and industrial sector efforts
- Commercial refrigeration (air and chiller conditioning): prevention of environmental releases during servicing, conversion to alternatives substitutes and technologies, destruction of recovered fluorocarbons
- Mobile air conditioning
- Domestic refrigeration
- Foams sector
- Domestic refrigerator/freezer insulation
- Construction foams
- Solvent sector
- Aerosol sector
- Destruction
References
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Eleanor, I., and Deborah, B., 2018. Scientists measure rise in ozone-destroying chemical, Earth Sky, [Online]. Available from: https://earthsky.org/earth/emissions-ozone-destroying-chemical-cfcs-rising-again, [Accessed on 7 November 2018].
NASA., 2018. NASA Study: first direct proof of ozone hole recovery due to chemicals ban [Online]. Available from: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/nasa-study-first-direct-proof-of-ozone-hole-recovery-due-to-chemicals-ban, [Accessed on 7 November 2018].
Panwar, N.L., Kaushik, S.C. and Kothari, S., 2011. Role of renewable energy sources in environmental protection: a review. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 15(3), pp.1513-1524. [Online]. Available from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032110004065, [Accessed on 7 November 2018].
Sakuda, J., Hosono, E., Yoshio, M., Ichikawa, T., Matsumoto, T., Ohno, H., … & Kato, T. (2015). Liquid?Crystalline Electrolytes for Lithium?Ion Batteries: Ordered Assemblies of a Mesogen?Containing Carbonate and a Lithium Salt. Advanced Functional Materials, 25(8), 1206-1212. Available from: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/adfm.201402509, [Accessed on 7 November 2018].
Seinfeld, J.H. and Pandis, S.N., 2012. Atmospheric chemistry and physics: from air pollution to climate change. John Wiley & Sons. [Online]. Available from: https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=YH2K9eWsZOcC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1991&dq=CFCs+pollution&ots=hL6pSf5VIx&sig=uTp15hdh11tzg2GiWvojboDgoKU, [Accessed on 7 November 2018].
Tiwary, A. and Williams, I., 2018. Air pollution: measurement, modelling and mitigation. CRC Press. [Online]. Available from: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781498719469, [Accessed on 7 November 2018].