Fossil Fuel Formation

Introduction

Fossil fuels, coal, natural gas and oil, were formed in the subsurface because for millions of years were formed in different places of the earth, layers of porous rocks rich in animal and plant compounds that were deposited for different causes, on the bottom of ancient seas. We must remember that on Earth are natural radioactive materials that, in their decay, generate energy that heats the inside. It can therefore reasonably assume that the porous rock is warmed to a temperature suitable for the transformation of organic matter in oil and also that they, being in the deep layers of the Earth, were crushed, like sponges, the weight of overlying rocks and oil leaked gathered in the spaces provided.

The chemical composition of the oil is very variable in the sense that it is composed of hydrocarbon chains, but the atoms that compose it are only carbon and hydrogen. As a result of breaking these chains of hydrocarbons, due to the high temperatures that can reach deep within the Earth, formed new chains of hydrocarbons, much shorter, which gave rise to natural gas. The coal formation occurred in marshy areas where the sediments of dead plant material originated from peat bogs which when heated within the earth gave rise to coal, a material consisting essentially of carbon.

Discussion and Analysis

Formation

Fossil fuels formed over millions of years from dead plants that were quickly buried, removing carbon from the atmosphere in the process. Thus fossil fuels contain carbon which has been out of circulation for up to hundreds of millions of years. Yet humans are digging up this carbon and burning it in the space of a few centuries. When carbon (C) is burned, it reacts with oxygen to produce carbon dioxide (CO2), a heat-trapping greenhouse gas.

Carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning is the main cause of anthropogenic global warming, now far outstripping natural influences on climate. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is like radioactive waste: much of it hangs around for a very long time. As long as humanity continues to burn fossil fuels, carbon dioxide will continue to accumulate in the atmosphere and the Earth will continue to warm. The urgent need to prevent further warming leaves us with no choice but to phase out fossil fuels as rapidly as possible.

Possibly the first fossil fuel used by the man outside the crowd, the first phase in the formation of coal. The peat deposits are found in swamps, in areas with certain climatic and topographic conditions, because the soil must be able to retain water in the surface or near it, and the temperature must be such that there is no one Rapid evaporation and putrefaction (5 to 9 ° C). So there are deposits of peat in northern temperate zones of Europe.

For their origin, coal, natural gas and oil are Sun's energy stored in the Earth in the form of chemical bonds Carbon-Carbon (CC) and carbon-hydrogen (CH).  These fuels as a result of an action of ignition, such as that ...