• Question: What is a disadvantage of using gas?

    Asked by jennyjellys to Andrew, Daniel, Hayley, Natalia, Peta on 15 Nov 2011.
    • Photo: Andrew Cairns

      Andrew Cairns answered on 13 Nov 2011:

      As the first to answer, I get to take the most obvious answer!

      Gas is a hydrocarbon fuel – that is made up of hydrogen and carbon in short chains. When you burn something, in a fire, in your cooker or boiler at home, you are causing a chemical reaction to bond everything in it to oxygen:

      CH3 + O2 -> CO2 + H2O
      Methane (natural gas) + Oxygen -> Carbon Dioxide + Water

      The problem with carbon dioxide is that it is a greenhouse gas – one that is causing global warming. Carbon Dioxide goes into the atmosphere and creates a ‘blanket’ around the earth, causing it to warm. Some people do not believe in man made global warming, but I (and most other scientists) do!

      So there, reason 1 why natural gas isn’t that great.

    • Photo: Daniel Scully

      Daniel Scully answered on 14 Nov 2011:

      Like Andrew said, most people dislike gas because it produces greenhouse gasses.

      But the main reason the government is taking gas seriously now is that North Sea gas supplies are running out and we’re becoming more dependent on importing gas from Europe.

      Dependency on others for something as vital as our heating and electricity is not good.

      Much of Europe’s gas comes from Russia. So what happens to us if Russia decides to stop sending the gas?
      Like in 2009 when Ukraine couldn’t pay their gas bill ($2.4billion) and Russia just shut down the pipeline!

      What if Russia used this to exert political pressure on us?

    • Photo: Peta Foster

      Peta Foster answered on 14 Nov 2011:

      It just is not very good for the environment as Andrew and Daniel have explained.

      What could we use instead?

      Lasers can be used to compress fuel (gathered from sea water) to create fusion. This is much cleaner because the by-products are Helium, as you might find in a balloon and more of the fuel we use for the fusion.

      The laser i work with produces beams of high energy ions which we can use to make the fusion process more efficient. The ion beam would act like the spark plus in a car and allow us to get more energy out that we would have.

      Check out the next project we are hoping gets build to work on this 😀
      http://www.hiper-laser.org/index.asp

    • Photo: Hayley Smith

      Hayley Smith answered on 15 Nov 2011:

      Like the others have all said there are numerous disadvantages to gas – I think for me, the fact that natural gas is a fossil fuel and therefore not renewable is a major drawback.
      Loads of things have been suggested when I was growing up to get renewable energy sources, wind, solar, tidal, geothermal power etc etc and many of these have started to take off.
      But for the large scale power people are turning to more technological means such as laser fusion (such as HiPer, as described by Peta) or magnetic fusion where they hold the same fuel, that comes essentially from sea water, in strong magnetic fields (this is also being demonstrated in the UK, at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, Oxfordshire). People are also considering how they can alter conventional nuclear power and one idea is to create a so-called “Accelerator Driven Sub-Critical Reactor” which uses a particle accelerator to dictate the rate of nuclear fission. There’s an awful lot of work needed to be done on all of these technologies but they should hopefully come up with some good ideas for when the fossil fuels do eventually run out…

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