Федеральное агентство по образованию

Архангельский государственный технический университет

Кафедра иностранных языков

Энергия и

ее источники

Учебно-методическое пособие

для студентов – энергетиков

второго курса

Архангельск

2007

Рассмотрено и рекомендовано к изданию методической комиссией факультета промышленной энергетики Архангельского государственного технического университета 28 ноября 2007г.

Составители:

Н.И.Корельская, ст. преподаватель кафедры иностранных языков АГТУ

Т.Н.Истомина, ст. преподаватель кафедры иностранных языков АГТУ

Рецензент:

М.А. Калинина, канд. пед. наук, заведующая кафедрой иностранных языков АГТУ.

Корельская Н.И., Истомина Т.Н.

Энергия и ее источники: Учебно-методическое пособие для студентов-энергетиков второго курса, 2-ое изд., переработанное и дополненное – Архангельск: Изд-во АГТУ, 2007. – с.

Учебно-методическое пособие разработано на кафедре иностранных языков АГТУ. Составлено в соответствии с программой курса «Английский язык для технических специальностей высших учебных заведений» по материалам из английских журналов и учебников, изданных в России и за рубежом.

Предназначено для аудиторной и домашней работы студентов II курса факультета промышленной энергетики всех специальностей с целью развития навыков чтения, перевода и устной речи.

© Архангельский государственный

технический университет, 2007

© Н.И.Корельская,

Т.Н.Истомина, 2007

Energy and its sources

No one would argue that the world's living standards and economic development largely depend on the availability of energy. There is hardly a sphere of life where power is not required. According to the rough estimates the demand for ener­gy in the first quarter of the 21-st century will double.

At present most of the power required is obtained mainly from two sources by burning oil, coal and gas at the thermal power plants and by using water power. Certainly this can't go on for ever. The resources of fossil fuels are not unlimited and in the next few decades the development of power industry will proceed in conditions of gradual depletion of deposits of organic fuels.

Up to 80 per cent of all potential fuel is located in the Asian part of the Russia in the distant areas of Siberia and Far East and the development of these resources is rather difficult. Besides, the deliveries of fuel from the East to the West are very expensive.

There is one more problem that worries millions of people - that is the environmental pollution. Specialists calculated that by the year of 2000 the release of harmful substances into the atmosphere by the energy-generating installations all over the world would increase to a thousand million of tons of ash and nearly five hundred million tons of SO₂. What would this mean for global ecology? Wouldn’t it mean the final blow to an atmosphere already devastated by acid rains? Besides, carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere while burning organic fuels destroys the atmosphere's protective ozone layer and produces a “greenhouse effect” that affects the climate.

The hydropower, the power of great rivers, is an inexhaustible, renewable and ecologically clean source of energy. However, by erecting dams large tracts of fertile lands and forests are submerged by the water of their reservoirs, thus causing great damage to the development of agriculture, to the climate of the areas.

So the main task of the present-day science and technology to find alternative energy sources of power that would be inexhaustible, ecologically clean and could compete with the traditional sources of power. Solar energy, geothermal heat, wind and tidal waves are considered to be such alternative, renewable sources. Scientists estimates that the use of such cheap energy source as wind may account for 20 per cent of energy demands in our country. So these sources are surely to be used on a wider scale. But they are still very expensive and at present make a rather “modest” contribution to total production of energy.

EXERCISES

Ex. 1. Translate the following words and remember them.

To create, equal, to flow, to provide, coil, possible, efficiency, calculation, armature.

Ex. 2. Translate the following words given below paying attention to different suffixes and prefixes.

Rapid - rapidly - rapidity

usual - usually – unusual

to investigate – investigater – investigation

to operate – operator – operation

sufficient – sufficiently – insufficient

to place – replace – replacement – displace

local – locality – location – localize

part – partly

to value – valuable

to equip – equipment – reequip

Ex. 3. Translate the following word-combinations.

Plant’s power capacity

hydroelectric power plant production

high dam technology

air circulation techniques

water-regime control

full scale energy forest plantations

wood-fired district heating plant

emergency direct current relay

HYDROPOWER

Water power was used by the Romans more than 1500 years ago to gring flour. Water wheels are known to have provided motive power for a wide variety of European manufactures.

New stage in the utilization of water-power began in the 19-th century with the invention of hydraulic turbine to pro­duce electricity. The first one invented by Founeyron in 1827, with the capacity of 37 KW was followed by many more. During last 80 years there appeared Pelton-, Francis-, Kaplan-turbines. Turbines intended for different overfall and head of water de­rived their names from their inventors.

Hydropower is widely utilized all over the world. Nowadays great amounts of total electric supply of the world comes from waterpower. In such countries as Norway, Sweden and Switzerland most of their electricity is produced from waterpower. In 1982 Sweden's hydroplants produced 54,191 gigawatt hours of electricity accounting for about 55 per cent of country's electricity production. (One gigawatt equals billion watts.) That is why the overall cost of electricity in Sweden is one of the lowest electricity prices in the world. Only Norway's 100 per cent hydropower system is cheeper. These countries have been developing large hydroelectric power stations because they lack a sufficient fuel supply.

The tendency nowadays even for countries that have large coal and oil resources is to utilize their water resources in order to conserve their natural fuels. It is estimated, that every 3 000 kilowatt-hours generated by hydropower saves about 6 barrels of crude oil or 2 tons of coal (one barrel equals 1145 litres). The Grand Coulee Dam on Columbia River, America's biggest power producer saves nearly 190 million barrels annual­ly.

Thus speaking of the advantages of hydropower, saving of natural fuels is the first one. It should be noted also, that hydropower is renewable and is produced without pollution or radiation. And moreover hydropower is cheap and abundant.

As far as the disadvantages are concerned, they are as follows. Firstly, the durability of the construction and, con­sequently, great capital investment. Secondly, settlements, forested and agricultural areas have been flooded and local climates have been affected as a result of the construction of hydroelectric power plants.

But nevertheless value of hydropower continues to grow.

Hydropower engineering is developing mainly by construct­ing high capacity stations integrated into river system known as cascades. Such cascades are already in operation on the Dnieper, the Volga and the Angara.

The greatest Angara-Yenisei Cascade is known to have 17 gigawatt total capacity.

EXERCISES

Ex. 1. Translate the following words and remember them.

Tide, tidal, through quality, output, to require, to carry, to change, sensitive, similar.

Ex. 2. Translate the following words given below paying attention to different suffixes and prefixes.

To rotate – rotor – rotary – rotation

heat – heaten – overheat – reheat

Convert – converter – conversion

connect – connection – disconnect

possible – possibility – impossible

electric – electrify – electrical – electrification

need – needless

store – storage

Ex. 3. Translate the following word-combinations.

High-tension transmission line

alternating current transformer

transmission line wire insulation

temperature difference

high-voltage transmission lines

high quality steel production

transmission line performance

TIDES AND TIDAL POWER PLANTS

Tidal energy is one of the natural sources of energy. The periodic rise and fall of the ocean on a coast line is well known. Utilization of tidal energy has been studied in a number of countries such as Russia, the USA, France, Canada, England and others. The potential capacity of the tides is evaluated in different ways and is expressed by a tremendous figure which exceeds the output of all the electric power plants now in operation. Tidal forces are expected to make considerable contribution to future electricity production.

By intercepting ocean or sea water at high tide in a basin and directing it back through turbines at low tide one could create a kind of a working hydro-electric plant. Although there are tides along all coasts of all countries not all places possess the necessary qualities for the installation of an efficient, reliable and economical tidal power plant. The most important technical features are the amplitude of the tide, the surface area of the basin and the size of the dam required. Suitable places can be found for instance, on the French coast and it was here, in the delta of the Rance River that the first commercial tidal power plant with a 240 000 kilowatt capacity was built.

Russia's tidal power sources are among the greatest in the world. No wonder that several large tidal po­wer plants are planned to be built here. Kislaya Bay on the Ba­rents Sea was found to be the very place for the construction of the first experimental tidal electric station in our count­ry. At high tide the water from the Barents Sea flows in through an operating turbine, while at low tide the water is conducted back to the sea through that very turbine making it work in both directions. Such a turbine makes it possible to use both high and low tides to the best advantage. When building this station the Soviet specialists took into account the experience of the French specialists and introduced quite a few of their own ideas, first of all, in methods of construction to make them not so costly. The building of the station was assembled in Murmansk far removed from the Kislaya Bay and then was pulled all in one piece by tugboats to its place. Then it was installed on an underwater foundation prepared beforehand.

Russia has many places along its coastline which would make it possible to build power plants of this type of unprecedented capacities. The most attractive of these sites is the Penzhinskaya Bay in the Okhotsk Sea. The 75-km-wide bay with rocky shores and tides 14 meters high makes it possible to build a tidal power plant of a fantastic capacity up to 100 000 000 kw there. This plant would equal more than 15 Krasnoyarakaya hydro-power stations.

EXERCISES

Ex. 1. Translate the following words and remember them.

Direction, directly, thermonuclear, fusion, amount, to produce, to enable, to expect, insulator, leaking off.

Ex. 2. Translate the following-words given below paying attention to different suffixes and prefixes.

To damage – damageable

to emit – emissive – emission

to add – addition

constant – constancy – constantly

to establish – establishment

rule – ruler

similar – similarity

Ex. 3. Translate the following word-combinations.

High-capacity storage cells

the Soviet-made hydrogen-air electrochemical generator

power supply increase programme

energy balance

high-voltage switch

THERMONUCLEAR FUSION

Nuclear Physics gives two directions for solving the ener­gy problem. One of them is the uranium-based electric power plants which are already in operation and give more than one fifth of all the energy produced at present. However the fuel for such a station is uranium the reserves of which are limi­ted. The second way for solving the energy problem is the thermonuclear fusion. Physicists have been interested for years in finding an explanation of the source of energy of the sun. The sun is in fact a gigantic thermonuclear reactor where hundreds of millions of tons of hydrogen are fusing every second, releasing a vast amount of energy. The scientists asked if there is any possibility to reproduce this process on Earth. After all, hydrogen is one of the components of water. Why should electric power stations not work on water fuel? A glass of water could replace a ton of oil and mankind would receive a practically in­exhaustible source of energy.

Now the problem is to find a way of performing this reaction at a controlled rate. The most accessible for practical use is thermonuclear reaction in a mixture of heavy isotopes of hydro­gen – deuterium and tritium. Through the fusion of the nuclei of these elements ten million times more energy is released per unit of fuel weight than in the combustion of conventional orga­nic fuel. However, the reaction which can produce useful energy will take place only at very high temperatures of about 100 mil­lion degrees Centigrade, where matter can only exist in the form of plasma. The problem is how to keep plasma at such a tempera­ture because no material can withstand such heat without vaporizing. Soviet scientists suggested the idea of trapping plasma in a strong magnetic field. For this purpose the first Tokamak installation in the world was designed and built at the Kurchatov Atomic Energy Institute in the late 1960's. The Tokamak is a ring-shaped vacuum chamber where the magnetic field created by the electric current isolates the plasma from the walls of the chamber. The results obtained were so impressive that these installations began to spread to all the countries engaged in controlled thermonuclear synthesis research. In the summer of 1975 the Kurchatov institute started the world's largest experimental thermonuclear installation Tokamak-10 and obtained plasma with a temperature which exists only in the depth of the sun – 90 million degrees. Soviet scientists hope to receive plasma with a temperature of 100 million deg­rees on Tokamak-15, the start-up of which took place on December 28, 1988. This is a new step to the establishment of ther­monuclear power engineering.

EXERCISES

Ex. 1. Translate the following words and remember them.

Consumption, quantity, environment, contaminate, load, furnace, length, to lose, to pass, passage, winding.

Ex. 2. Translate the following words given below paying attention to different suffixes and prefixes.

To construct – construction – constructor – constructive – to reconstruct

to contain – container

to contribute – contribution

to install – installation

to form – to reform – formation

nuclear – nucleus – nuclei

peaceful – peace

reliable – to rely – reliability

Ex. 3. Translate the following word-combinations.

High-temperature heat receiver

gas turbine power plant

liquid energy storage

wind energy conversion systems

government energy problem study

waste water treatment technologies

a piston type steam engine

Notes on the text:

With an aggregate capacity of – с суммарной мощностью

GEOTHERMAL ENERGY

Energy problem causes concern to the whole of mankind. It is estimated that the present rate of increase in energy use could exhaust the supply of fossil fuels in the twenty­first century. The mining and the combustion of oil, gas and coal in ever increasing quantities contaminate the environment.

Searches for alternatives to fossil fuels are being car­ried out in the world, geothermal energy being one of them. The heat contained in the Earth's crust exceeds by several thousand times the resources of all the fuel deposits discovered. This energy is being replenished constantly and may be considered to be inexhaustible. It should be noted that geothermal energy is ecologically clean energy.

The use of geothermal energy for electric power production seems to be the most realistic and profitable compared with all the other replenishable energy sources.

The economic indices of geothermal power stations (GTPS) are, for the most part, superior even to traditional thermal power stations (TPS). Capital investment is smaller and the cost of the electric power produced is lower. The most impor­tant feature of geothermal power stations (GTPS) is its adoptability to load changes. But there are only a few places in Earth where necessary conditions for GTPS occur naturally. Most of the GTPS operating nowadays use selfoutflowing thermal water, for example, GTPS in Pauzhetka (Kamchatka).

On the other hand, it should be noted that the main heat resources within the Earth are concentrated not in thermal waters but in rocks. The technology of deep drilling having made a qualitative leap forward, we see possibility of developing techniques for obtaining energy from rocks loca­ted at the depth of several kilometers in the Earth's ent­rails.

The idea is quite simple. A number of wells-water fee­ding and working should be drilled in a certain pattern. Cold water is pumped down the feed wells. Passing through the rocks the water is heated (or turns into steam or into a mixture of both) and comes back to the surface through the working wells. Now it can be used for either generating elec­tricity or district heating purposes.

The idea of borrowing energy from volcanoes is also att­ractive, because a volcano is a ready-made furnace with high temperatures and huge heat resources. The magma in volcanic zones, lies at a relatively small depth in some cases and its temperature can vary from 600° to 1,200° C.

The thermal energy resources of the magma of the Avachinskaya Sopka could according to preliminary data ensure the operation of an electric station of 1,000 megawatt capacity, and the Klyuchevskaya Sopka system would make it possible due to assessments made to build several GTPS with an aggregate capacity of up to 10,000 megawatts.