Richard A. Dunlap

Renewable Energy Richard A. Dunlap

This three volume compendium begins with a review of our past dependence on fossil fuels as our primary energy source and our future needs to change how our energy is produced and utilized due to diminishing resources and environmental impact.

The first volume presents the major options for carbon-free energy including hydroelectric and solar energy for both thermal applications and the production of electricity, wind energy, and biofuels as a replacement in the transportation industry. Yet, all of these options will not work on a large scale without proper energy storage, which is the topic of the second and third volumes.

The second volume reviews the possible methods of storing energy in the form of mechanical or thermal energy. Mechanical methods include those that make use of gravitational potential energy and the storage of energy by compressing air or by storing as rotational energy in a flywheel. Sensible heat storage is discussed in terms of its applications to residential heating, community-based storage, solar ponds, and thermal storage for grid-integrated energy systems.

The third volume considers various methods of energy storage that make use of electrochemical reactions, electric and magnetic fields, and chemical reactions. It outlines multiple types of batteries as well as supercapacitors, pseudo-capacitors, and hybrid capacitors. It ends with techniques in chemical energy storage and the use of hydrogen, methane, methanol, and ammonia as energy carriers.