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Tomorrow's Energy Here Today
As new technologies are introduced around the globe, the challenge is to meet the world’s rising energy demands with economical, environmentally friendly fuels. In the future, there will be a need to rely more on renewable energy and less on fossil fuels. Renewable energy sources such as wind and hydrogen are non-polluting and they won’t run out.
Wind energy
How it Works
Wind turbines are high-tech modern windmills used to harness wind energy.
The power drawn from the wind turbine begins with the kinetic energy present in the wind. The wind moves the blades of the windmill, transferring its kinetic energy over to the blades, which then transfers to a shaft just inside the tower that turns when the blades spin. Finally, the shaft turns an electrical generator, which transforms the kinetic energy from the wind into electrical energy that we can use!
What Shell is Doing
Shell is involved in 11 wind operations in the U.S. and Europe. Eight of the eleven projects are in the U.S. in the states of West Virginia, Colorado, Iowa, Texas, California, and Wyoming.
Hydrogen
Oil Sands
Shell is constantly developing new technology and looking for new and better ways to remove oil from the ground.
What They Are
Oil sands are also referred to as tar pits. These black “pits” are a mixture of clay, sand, water, and bitumen – a form of petroleum which exists in a solid state. The bitumen is what interests scientists and what gives the sand its black color: there is no actual tar in a tar pit!
More than 2 trillion barrels of petroleum exists worldwide in the form of bitumen. In order to harness this petroleum, the bitumen needs to be separated from the sand first.
How They Work
Bitumen near the surface can be extracted through surface mining. The first step in this process is to condition the compound of sand and bitumen and to break apart large chunks of oil sands. Once that is done, the oil sand is mixed with warm water and transported by pipeline to an extraction facility. There, the sand is separated from the bitumen and the frothy bitumen left over is cleaned and ready for use.
Deeper oil wells, however, cannot be reached from the surface. With these, a process called steam-assisted gravity drainage is used, in which steam is injected deep into the oil sands. The intense temperature and pressure from the steam separate the bitumen from the sand, causing the bitumen to rise.
What Shell is Doing
Shell is constantly developing new technology and looking for new and better ways to remove oil from the ground. To do that, we are making sustainable development a part of our mission. Sustainable development projects, like the Athabasca Oil Sands Project in Canada, are designed to benefit the community and to protect the environment.
The downside of mining oil sands is that the process can produce lots of the pollutants linked to global climate change, like greenhouse gases. To keep its promise of sustainability, Shell has appointed a team of experts to develop ways to reduce emissions at the site and come up with an overall plan for managing greenhouse gases.
Right now, extracting oil from sand is an unusual way to get energy! But oil sands have great potential as an energy resource for the future.
Oil Shale
What it Is
Most petroleum developed through a long process over thousands of years, resulting in the liquid form we see most often today. However, some never quite finished that process – some petroleum exists which is trapped in crude form inside of rock. We call this rock oil shale. Because of the growing demand for new forms of oil, oil shale is being harvested more and more to be processed into useable oil.
How it Works
The oil shale’s journey starts with a process called retorting, in which extreme heat (600 – 700 degrees Fahrenheit) is applied to the rock to liquefy the fossil fuel (kerosene) trapped within. The kerosene is then refined into useable petroleum.
Most oil shale is mined before it is retorted, which cause problems with waste from the mined rock. However, Shell has come up with a solution to many such problems with oil shale refinement. Using a process called In Situ Conversion, holes are drilled into the rock and electrical heaters are inserted down into the holes. The heaters warm the rock gradually, causing kerosene to rise to the surface, where it can be collected on-site over a period of two years.
This process eliminates the need to mine the area and dispose of the rock. The process also includes a new idea called a freeze wall, in which a barrier is formed around the oil shale site by freezing the groundwater. This prevents potentially harmful byproducts of the extraction process from seeping in and contaminating groundwater. Shell is working closely with the nearby community to make sure its research addresses community needs while strongly protecting the oil shale fields, and our Earth in general.
What Shell is Doing
To read more about the In Situ Conversion Process and Shell’s new developments in the task of refining oil shale, visit Shell's Mahogany Research Project .
Solar Energy
Solar energy is a clean, reliable source of power. Just 20 days’ worth of sunlight contains as much energy as all of the fossil fuels on Earth.
How it Works
The power from solar panels starts with photovoltaic cells. Each panel contains photovoltaic cells (“photo” meaning light, “voltaic” meaning electricity) which do exactly what they sound like they do: convert sunlight directly into electricity. These cells are made of semiconductors, which absorb light and transfer the light’s energy into the semiconductor. The extra surge of energy frees electrons, which are then guided by the electric fields of the photovoltaic cells to flow in a certain direction and create a current of electrical energy.
Biomass
Corn husks, banana peels, even dried-up animal waste – these could be the fuels of the future.
What it Is
Biomass fuels (biofuels) exist is many forms: vegetable oils, biodiesels, bioethers, and more. You may have already heard of ethanol, a biofuel made from plants such as corn or sugarcane. Other plants, like soybeans, can be used to make biodiesel, another biofuel. They can be created from plant oils or animal fats, and are all non-toxic and renewable, unlike the quickly depleting deposits of fossil fuels that dominates the energy market today.
Biofuels are quickly growing in popularity worldwide. While they have not yet been made readily available in all locations, it is suspected that biofuels may eventually replace fossil fuels as the nation’s leading source of fuel.
How It Works
The plant oils and animal fats used to create biofuels contain fats known as triglycerides. Through anaerobic digestion – a series of processes in which microorganisms break down biodegradeable material – these triglycerides can be harnessed to create energy.
The anaerobic digestion process begins by breaking down the trigycerides into sugars and amino acids. The sugars and acids are then turned into carbon dioxide, hydrogen, ammonia, and organic acids. Finally, microorganisms called methanogens which produce methane convert the acids into methane and carbon dioxide. This methane can be used to generate heat and power your car!
What Shell is Doing
Shell is one of the world’s leaders in developing new biofuels technology. As the process of making ethanol and other biofuels becomes more efficient, fast-growing crops could one day be grown specifically for making fuel. And waste from farms or forestry operations could be used to make electricity, instead of being thrown in landfills. That gives a whole new meaning to the term "power plants!"