Week 2 Assignment 1. Fossil Fuels

Week 2 Assignment 1. Fossil Fuels

Charity Kisakye

Strayer University

SCI110 (online class)

Professor Elizabeth Brabson

10/21/2012

Fossil fuels can also be defined as sources of energy that come from deep within the ground and they are formed from millions of years of prehistoric plants and animals which died and due to the work of pressure, heat and bacteria their organic matter decayed and formed huge deposits forming oil, coal and natural gas.

Oil (petroleum) and natural gas were formed in the same way. Natural gas and petroleum are formed from organic sediments and materials that have settled out of water bodies and some conditions permitted the accumulation of sediments that are exceptionally rich in organic materials for example in fresh water bodies or in ocean basins. Some of the organic material is from plankton which are tiny free floating animals and plants such as algae and it is from these buried organic materials through which gas and oil were formed later. Coal is formed from dead remains of trees, ferns and other plants that lived 300 to 400 millions of years ago that died and sunk in swamps and it was found in stagnant swamp water. Stagnant swamp water shielded the plants and plant materials from being consumed by animals and also from being decomposed by microorganisms. After sometime due to chemical reactions the plant materials were altered into peat which is a carbon-rich material. The peat when exposed to high temperatures and pressure will eventually be converted to coal. There are several stages in the formation of coal and the lowest stage is lignite (brown coal), then subbituminous, then bituminous (soft coal) and the highest rank is...