FTV 1/14/2012 Fueling Up

Did you know that everything you do takes energy? Even while you are sitting still, your body is using energy to breath, to keep your blood circulating and to control many different processes, like digestion, and waste removal. It is not only living things that need energy everything that moves or changes in any way need energy to move.

For a ship machines like motors and engines need energy to move. The need for energy is so great because almost everything that happens on Earth involves energy, Energy resources can be put into two categories, either renewable or non renewable. Resources that are nonrenewable are used faster than they can be replaced.

Renewable energy resources are those that can be replaced quickly after they are used. Fossil fuels which include coal, oil and natural gas are the most common examples of nonrenewable energy resources. Fossil Fuels are made from materials that began forming about 500 million years ago. As plants and animals died, their remains settled on the ground and at the bottom of bodies of water.

Overtime, these remains formed layer after layer. Eventually, all of these layers were buried deep enough, that they the earth’s mass heat and pressure turned into chemicals compounds known as hydrocarbons. Hydrocarbons are substances formed from carbon and hydrogen chains. Hydrocarbons can be solids, liquids or gases. The liquid form of these hydrocarbons is petroleum, or crude oil. The crude oil is a thick liquid that is usually dark brown or black.

Oil is formed mainly of by small organisms like plankton and algae, when these organisms die their remains settle to the bottom of the sea and over a period of millions of years, the heat and pressure of the earth turn them into to liquid oil. Once oil is taken from the well, it is sent to an oil refinery to separate it in several useful products such as gasoline, diesel, and heating oil.

Crude oil currently provides about 90% of the energy used for transportation around the world. The T.S. Kennedy uses a special form of diesel oil called Diesel Fuel Marine. When we were anchored in South Carolina a large fuel barge tied up along our side and delivered 8,500 barrels of this fuel. Here is some information that you can use to solve the challenges below:

1 Barrel of oil = 42 gallons
1 mile = 1.15 nautical miles
To travel 1 nautical mile 1 barrel of oil is used.


Learn how to make Unit Conversions like a Scientist.


Practice solving conversions problems


Here is the Challenge of the day