Fuel is a material which is burnt in order to obtain energy. All carbon based life forms from micro organism to animals and human depend on and use fuels as their source of energy. With the development of the steam engine in 1769 coal came into more common use as power source. The first use of fuel was combustion of wood or sticks by Homoerectus near 2 million years ago. All currently known fuels ultimately derive their energy from a small number of sources. Much of the chemical energy produced by life forms are  fossil fuels.
Chemical fuels are substances that generate energy by reacting with substances around them most notably by the process of oxidization. Bio fuels can be broadly defined as solid, liquid  gas fuel consisting of or derived from any carbon sources that can be replenished rapidly e.g. plants and plant derived materials are used for bio-fuel manufacture. Fossil fuels are hydro carbons. Modern large scale industrial development is based on fossil fuel use, fusion fuel tend to be light comment such as hydrogen, which will combine easily.

                World Bank reported that the U.S.A. was the top fuel importer in 2005 followed by Japan and E.U. Coal was  first used as a fuel around 1000 BC  in china.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 18th, 2008 at 4:59 am and is filed under Fuel Consumption. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.