adding fuel to the flames definition of adding fuel to the flames in the Free Online Encyclopedia.

fuel, material that can be burned or otherwise consumed to produce heat. The common fuels used in industry, transportation, and the home are burned in air. The carbon and hydrogen in fuel rapidly combine with oxygen in the air in an exothermal reaction—one that liberates heat. Most of the fuels used by industrialized nations are in the form of incompletely oxidized and decayed animal and vegetable materials, or fossil fuels, specifically coal coal, fuel substance of plant origin, largely or almost entirely composed of carbon with varying amounts of mineral matter.

Types

There is a complete series of carbonaceous fuels, which differ from each other in the relative amounts of moisture,
..... Click the link for more information. , peat peat, soil material consisting of partially decomposed organic matter; found in swamps and bogs in various parts of the temperate zone. It is formed by the slow decay of successive layers of aquatic and semiaquatic plants, e.g., sedges, reeds, rushes, and mosses.
..... Click the link for more information. , lignite lignite (lĭg`nīt) or brown coal,
..... Click the link for more information. , petroleum petroleum, oily, flammable liquid that occurs naturally in deposits, usually beneath the surface of the earth; it is also called crude oil. It consists principally of a mixture of hydrocarbons , with traces of various nitrogenous and sulfurous compounds.
..... Click the link for more information. , and natural gas Liquefied natural gas, or LNG, is natural gas that has been pressurized and cooled so as to liquefy it for convenience in shipping and storage. The boiling point of natural gas is extremely low, and only in the 1970s did cryogenic technology (see low-temperature physics ) advance
..... Click the link for more information. . From these natural fuels other artificial ones can be derived. Coal gas, coke coke, substance obtained by the destructive distillation of bituminous coal . Coke bears the same relation to coal as does charcoal to wood. A hard, gray, massive, porous fuel, coke is the solid residue remaining after bituminous coal is heated to a high temperature
..... Click the link for more information. , water gas water gas, colorless poisonous gas that burns with an intensely hot, bluish (nearly colorless) flame. The gas is a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen with very small amounts of other gases, e.g., carbon dioxide, and is almost entirely combustible as a result.
..... Click the link for more information. , and producer gas producer gas, fuel gas consisting chiefly of carbon monoxide and nitrogen. It is prepared in a furnace or generator in which air is forced upward through a burning fuel of coal or coke. Although the fuel is introduced through the top, no air is admitted there.
..... Click the link for more information. can be made using coal as the principal ingredient. Gasoline gasoline or petrol, light, volatile mixture of hydrocarbons for use in the internal-combustion engine and as an organic solvent, obtained primarily by fractional distillation and "cracking" of petroleum, but also obtained from natural gas, by
..... Click the link for more information. , kerosene kerosene or kerosine, colorless, thin mineral oil whose density is between 0.75 and 0.85 grams per cubic centimeter. A mixture of hydrocarbons, it is commonly obtained in the fractional distillation of petroleum as the portion boiling off
..... Click the link for more information. , and fuel oil are made from petroleum. For most transportation, fuel must be in a liquid form.

There is a growing concern about the environmental contamination caused by the burning of great amounts of fossil fuels and about the increasing expense of finding them and processing them into easily usable forms (see energy, sources of energy, sources of, origins of the power used for transportation, for heat and light in dwelling and working areas, and for the manufacture of goods of all kinds, among other applications.
..... Click the link for more information. ). During the last 100 years the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased, and there is evidence that this phenomenon may be due to the burning of fossil fuel. Use of biomass, which consists of plants or plant waste, would not produce excess carbon dioxide because the plants absorb the gas for their growth. Wood is not as concentrated a form of energy as fossil fuels, but it can be converted into a more energy-rich fuel called charcoal charcoal, substance obtained by partial burning or carbonization (destructive distillation ) of organic material. It is largely pure carbon . The entry of air during the carbonization process is controlled so that the organic material does not turn to ash, as in a
..... Click the link for more information. . Burning fossil fuel also releases acidic oxides of sulfur and nitrogen, which are deposited on the earth in rainwater (see acid rain acid rain or acid deposition, form of precipitation (rain, snow, sleet, or hail) containing high levels of sulfuric or nitric acids (pH below 5.5–5.6).
..... Click the link for more information. ). The clearing of forests forest, a dense growth of trees, together with other plants, covering a large area of land. The science concerned with the study, preservation, and management of forests is forestry .
..... Click the link for more information. , particularly in the tropical regions, also threatens to increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere because the forests utilize carbon dioxide for growth.

The amount of fossil fuel available is limited and new methods of recovery are being developed. One proposed alternative fuel is hydrogen, which is now employed as a fuel only for a few special purposes because of its high cost. Hydrogen can be produced by electrolysis of water for which nonfossil fuels would supply the energy. Solar energy could be utilized either by direct conversion to electricity using photovoltaic cells or by trapping solar heat. Fuels are rated according to the amount of heat (in calories or Btu) they can produce. Nuclear fuels are also possible substitutes for fossil fuels. Nuclear fuels are not burned; they undergo reactions in which the nuclei of their atoms either split apart, i.e., undergo fission, or combine with other nuclei, i.e., undergo fusion. In either case, a small part of the nuclear mass is converted to heat energy. All nuclear fuels currently employed in practical, nonweapons applications react by fission.

High-energy fuels for jet engines and rockets are rated by their specific impulse in thrust per pound of propellant per second. Hydrogen, which is the lightest element, is usually used in the form of compounds, because the density of liquid hydrogen is low and therefore a large volume is required. Addition of aluminum powder or lithium increases the efficiency. Rockets usually have a self-contained supply of oxygen or some other oxidizer, such as ammonium, lithium, or potassium perchlorate. Fuels such as turpentine, alcohol, aniline, and ammonia use nitric acid, hydrogen peroxide, and liquid oxygen as oxidizers. More power can be obtained by oxidizing hydrazine, diborane, or hydrogen with oxygen, ozone, or fluorine.

See oil gas oil gas, any of a group of fuel gases produced from oil by exposing it to high temperatures. High-Btu oil gas is so called because of its high heating value; it is often used to supplement natural gas during periods of high demand.
..... Click the link for more information. ; liquefied petroleum gas liquefied petroleum gas or LPG, mixture of gases, chiefly propane and butane, produced commercially from petroleum and stored under pressure to keep it in a liquid state.
..... Click the link for more information. ; gas, fuel gas, fuel, gaseous substance that burns in air and releases enough heat to be useful as a fuel, while also remaining sufficiently stable at ordinary temperatures to permit long-term storage without deterioration or undue hazard.
..... Click the link for more information. ; nuclear energy nuclear energy, the energy stored in the nucleus of an atom and released through fission, fusion, or radioactivity . In these processes a small amount of mass is converted to energy according to the relationship E = mc², where E
..... Click the link for more information. .

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