Miller 17th ed Living in the Environment ch 15 vocab
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| 320579093 | net energy | the usable amount of high-quality energy available from a given quantity of an energy resource. | |
| 320579094 | Petroleum or crude oil | oil as it comes out of the ground: black, gooey liquid consisting of hundreds of different combustible hydrocarbons along with small amounts of sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen impurities. | |
| 320579095 | peak production | the point in time after years of pumping when the pressure in a well drops and its rate of conventional crude oil production starts to decline. | |
| 320579096 | petrochemicals | products of crude oil distillation that are used as raw materials in industrial organic chemicals, cleaning fluids, pesticides, plastics, synthetic fibers, paints, medicines, and many other products. | |
| 320579097 | proven oil reserves | identified deposits from which conventional crude oil can be extracted profitably at current prices with current technology. | |
| 320579098 | unproven reserves | other deposits of potentially recoverable oil. | |
| 320579099 | shale oil | a distillate from oil rocks that have been crushed and heated. | |
| 320579100 | natural gas | a mixture of gases of which 50 - 90% is methane that is used as a fuel when burned to heat space and water to produce electricity and propel vehicles. | |
| 320579101 | liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) | liquefied propane and butane gases from a natural gas field. | |
| 320579102 | liquefied natural gas (LNG) | when natural gas is liquefied at a high pressure at a very low temperature in order to transport it in refrigerated tankers to convert it back to its natural state to be distributed by pipeline. | |
| 320579103 | synthetic natural gas (SNG) | using coal gasification to convert solid coal into a gas without sulfur and other impurities. | |
| 320579104 | nuclear fusion | a nuclear change at the atomic level in which the nuclei of 2 isotopes of a light element such as hydrogen are forced together at extremely high temperatures until they fuse to form a heavier nucleus, releasing energy in the process. |
