Fossil Fuels
Three types of fossil fuel: coal, crude oil and natural gas.
- Stored solar energy.
- Harnessed by photosynthesis.
- Stored in organic matter, mostly plants.
- Partial decomposition of the organic matter.
- Burial in sediments.
- Occurs in large basins where erosion deposits sediments & organic matter.
- Buried to at least than 500 meters.
- Exposed to high temperature and high pressure.
- Chemically altered.
- Sediments are compressed.
- Slowly, organic matter becomes fossil fuels.
- Organic rich sediment is a source rock for fossil fuels.
- Transformation to oil and gas, the organic matter becomes much less dense.
- Rises due to lower density.
- Rises to a reservoir rock, a rock with pour spaces that can store oil and gas.
- Capped by a rock that is fine grained with small pore spaces.
- A trap is a structure in the rock that capture and concentrate.
- Produced by tectonic activity.
- They are non-renewable resources that we use them faster than they are produced.
page revision: 21, last edited: 24 May 2010 18:47