Grand Challenges in Advanced Fossil Fuel Technologies

INTRODUCTION Turn your ignition key and fuel ignites, pushing pistons, powering your automobile, and allowing you freedom and mobility. Simple! We drive to work; we drive for vacations; we drive just to drive. Transportation is just one of the many examples of society’s dependence on fossil fuels. Today, the burning of fossil fuels, including coal, oil, and gas meets more than 85% of the world’s energy needs. Figure 1A shows the distribution of the energy resources that meet the global consumption. Although renewable energy sources accounted for a record high of 2.7% of consumption in 2013, fossil-based energy resources continue to dominate the portfolio with oil, coal, and natural gas representing 33, 30, and 24% of global energy consumption, respectively (British Petroleum, 2013). Given our history and current reliance, it appears that fossil fuels are here to stay as long as they remain available. Technological advances in the recovery and transformation of fossil fuels to energy will be required in order to ensure that our usage of these resources will be environmentally sustainable with minimal impact to our environment and our quality of life. Fossil fuels are limited in the Earth and yet we have been igniting them 24 h/day for over a century. As a result, we live in a world that is warming faster than at any other time in human history due to the increase of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. Science tells us that there will be winners and losers in a rapidly warming world; however, there will be many more losers than winners. Animal species will face extinction. Ecosystems will collapse. Coastal cities will flood. Droughts and floods, stronger storms, wild fires, and other disasters will become more abundant. And while the Western world is wealthy and resilient enough to buffer against more frequent climate extremes, the world’s poorest, well over a billion men, women, and children, are not. As the population is expected to increase from seven billion to nine billion, the conservation of water, land, and materials will be essential to maintain quality of life. Water is a crucial component to energy production. The process of extracting energy from fossil fuels must be optimized in order to limit water usage while minimizing CO2 and other harmful emissions. Building clean-burning power plants with increased efficiency and low water requirements are objectives that will need to be met if the globe is able to withstand this forecasted population increase. In particular, grand challenges that will require our attention in the coming decades include: an increase in efficiency of the way in which energy is extracted from fossil fuels, the conservation of water in energy production, the sustainable recovery of fossil fuels, the flexibility of fuel generation, and an increased reliance on bioenergy.