NATURAL RESOURCES

 Our earth is the only planet in the universe known to support life.
Living things originated and survived on the earth because:
 All the materials required by living things, such as air, water, soil and
minerals are present on the earth.
 These are the major resources of the earth.
 The earth is at the right distance from the sun and therefore has the
right temperature range for life to exist.
 The light energy received from the sun plays an important role in the
survival of life on the earth.

Utilization of resources:
 Plants use carbon dioxide from the air, water and minerals from the
soil to make food in the presence of sunlight. This process is known as
photosynthesis. It takes place in green leaves in the presence of the
green pigment chlorophyll, present in these leaves.
 Animals need oxygen, water and food to survive. They get oxygen
from the air, water from water bodies such as ponds, lakes and rivers,
and food from plants or other animals.
 We humans also need food, air and water. We use the resources of the
earth in several other ways also.

For example:
 We use rocks and soil to construct houses, roads, dams, etc.
 We use metals such as iron, aluminium, copper, etc., for constructing
buildings and bridges, making machines, vehicles, aeroplanes, utensils
and other household items, etc.
 We use fuels, such as coal, petroleum and natural gas for cooking,
running vehicles, running machines in factories, producing electricity,
etc.

 Natural materials found on the earth that allow the existence of life
and satisfy the needs of living organisms are called natural resources.
 Plants and animals are living natural resources.
 Air, water, soil and minerals are non-living natural resources. We get
these natural resources from:
i. the solid parts of the earth's crust.
ii. the water bodies, such as seas, rivers and lakes on the earth.
iii. the gases (air) surrounding the earth, known as the atmosphere.

RENEWABLE AND NON-RENEWABLE RESOURCES

Our natural resources can be divided into two groups:
 Renewable resources
 Non-renewable resources
 Renewable resources are those that will either never run out, or those
that are replaced within a reasonable period of time through natural
processes.
 For example, sunlight is a resource which will never run out as the sun
is expected to last for another 5 billion years. Oxygen is renewable
because it is replaced in the atmosphere as plants release oxygen
during photosynthesis.
 However, most renewable resources are exhaustible if we use them
faster than they are renewed, or if we disturb the natural method of
their renewal.
 For example, groundwater is a renewable resource. However, today
we are using it faster than it is renewed. This is the reason why the
level of groundwater is going down.

 Non-renewable resources are those which once used up cannot be

replaced within a reasonable period of time.
 For example, fuels like petroleum, natural gas or coal take millions of
years to form. Hence, once used up, these resources cannot be
renewed before million of years. Similarly, topsoil takes hundreds of
years to form. Once topsoil is eroded, it cannot be replaced
immediately.
 However, some non-renewable resources such as metals can be used
again and again. These non-renewable resources can be recycled.

CONSERVATION OF RESOURCES
 All life on the earth depends on the earth's resources. Therefore, all
resources, whether renewable or non-renewable, need to be
conserved.
 Conservation is the wise and careful use of resources. It means not
wasting the resources, and also maintaining their quality.

 A few decades back, people did not give much attention to

conservation. However, now it has become very important primarily
due to two reasons:
 The population of the world has increased. There are more people on
the earth, and they use more resources to feed, clothe and house
themselves.
 As humans have progressed, their needs have increased. Their energy
needs, for example, have increased several fold. The average
resources consumed per person have, therefore, increased
considerably.

 Because of these two factors, the natural resources today are getting
used up and depleted much faster than a few decades back.
 This often leads to an imbalance in nature.
 A few forms in which these imbalances appear are pollution of air,
water and soil, changes in climate, and decrease in animal and plant
populations.
 Therefore, if we do not practise conservation, we will endanger our
very survival.

FUELS
 Anything that burns gives off heat. Wood, paper, coal and LPG are
combustible substances which produce heat on burning. However, all
combustible substances cannot be called fuels.
 A fuel is a substance that can be used to produce heat at a reasonable
cost.
 Fuels contain potential energy that is locked within the chemical bonds
of their constituent molecules. When they are burnt, a large part of
this energy is released as heat. This forms the basis of their use as
fuels.
 All common fuels contain carbon, either as a free element or in the
combined state.

FOSSIL FUELS
 Coal, petroleum and natural gas are called fossil fuels, as they were
naturally formed from the dead remains of living organisms.
 Coal was formed during a period of over millions of years from dead
plants that got buried inside the earth.
 Petroleum and natural gas were formed from dead sea animals, the
process again taking over millions of years.
 Since all living plants and animals ultimately derive their energy from
the sun, the energy of fossil fuels is also indirectly derived from the
sun.
 Fossil fuels are the most important source of energy for us today. They
are concentrated stores of energy and give off heat and light on
burning.
 The heat can be used to cook food or to run engines such as
automobile engines.
 It can be used to generate electricity as in powerhouses where the
most common fuel is coal.

COAL
 Coal is a fossil fuel. It is black in colour and hard as a stone. It has
formed over a period of millions of years, by the gradual decay and
compression of buried remains of ancient forests.

 About 300 million years ago, there were dense forests in low-lying
wetland areas or the earth. As the trees died, they got covered with
sand and mud.
 More trees grew on this sand and mud. When these died, they too got
covered. This process went on for centuries. Sometimes earthquakes
and volcanoes buried entire forests deep down in the earth.
 The high, temperature and high pressure inside the earth slowly
converted the buried vegetation into coal. As coal contains mainly
carbon, this slow process of conversion of wood into coal is called
coalification or carbonisation.
 The period during which this process of coal formation took place is
called the carboniferous age.
 Coal mainly consists of carbon. Hydrogen, oxygen and small amounts
of nitrogen and sulphur are also present.

 There are three main varieties of coal. They vary in their carbon
content.
 Anthracite has up to 96 per cent of carbon and is regarded as the best
variety of coal.
 Bituminous coal has about 65 per cent carbon.
 Lignite has about 38 per cent carbon.

When coal is heated in air, it burns to produce mainly carbon dioxide gas.
{C + O2 -> CO2 }
 Coal is used as a domestic and industrial fuel. It is widely used in
thermal power plants to produce electricity.
 In India, coal deposits are mainly found in Jharkhand, West Bengal,
Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.

Destructive distillation of coal:

 Destructive distillation of coal is carried out by heating coal strongly to
1000 °C in the absence of air. It yields various useful organic and
inorganic products. These products are as follows:
1. Coke: The residue left behind when destructive distillation of coal
is carried out is coke. It is an almost pure form of carbon. It is a
good fuel and burns with no smoke. It is also used to reduce metal
oxides, such as iron and zinc oxides, to get the metals.
2. Coal gas: It is a mixture of hydrogen, methane, carbon monoxide
and other gases. It was earlier used for domestic cooking and
lighting, but is not much used now.
3. Coal tar: Coal tar is a thick viscous liquid mainly used for road
construction.. It contains several carbon compounds. It is also used
to make pesticides, explosives, synthetic fibres, perfumes,
naphthalene balls to repel moths and insects, dyes and paints.
However, today these compounds are mostly obtained from
petroleum.
4. Ammonium compounds: These are given off during the destructive
distillation of coal. When dissolved in water, they give ammoniacal
liquor. It is used for making nitrogenous fertilizers

ACTIVITY 2 (Experimental investigation): To demonstrate destructive

distillation of coal in the laboratory:
 Take two boiling tubes, A and B. Put powdered coal in tube A and half-
fill tube B with water and set them up. Heat powdered coal strongly in
boiling tube A.
 As the gases given off by heated coal pass through the water in tube
B, you will see that black drops of coal tar collect at the bottom of tube
B.
 The ammonium compounds will dissolve in the water in tube B.
 However, coal gas will pass through the water and rise up. It can be
lighted at the end of the open tube.
 The residue left behind in tube A after the gases have stopped being
evolved is coke.

PETROLEUM:
 Petroleum or crude oil is found trapped in underground rocks. This is
why it is called petroleum ('petra' means rock, and 'oleum' means oil).
 It is a mixture of several hydrocarbons, with the number of carbon
atoms in the molecules varying from one to more than one hundred.
 The different components in petroleum are separated and used in
various ways. Their most important use is as fue Petrol, diesel and
kerosene are some of the fuels obtained from petroleum.

Origin
 Petroleum is believed to have formed, over a period of millions of
years, from organisms that lived in the sea at that time.
 When these organisms died, their bodies settled on the seabed, and
got covered with sand and clay. Over millions of years, heat and
pressure changed the dead organisms into petroleum hydrocarbons.

Occurrence
 Petroleum and natural gas are often found together as large deposits
deep inside the earth's crust.
 Petroleum is obtained by drilling through the earth and impervious
(non-porous) rock above it.
 The world's first oil well to yield petroleum was dug in Pennsylvania,
USA, in 1859. In India, oil was first struck in Makum in Assam in 1867.
 In India, oil is obtained from oil wells in Assam, Gujarat, Bombay High,
in the deltas of the rivers Godavari and Kaveri, and other places.
 The crude oil (diesel) pumped out from a well is a black liquid. Because
of its importance in today's world, it is referred to as black gold.

Refining of petroleum:
 The various hydrocarbons present in petroleum have different boiling
points. As the number of carbon atoms in a hydrocarbon increases, its
boiling point also increases.
 This property is used to separate the different components of
petroleum by fractional distillation.
 The components with different boiling points are known as fractions,
and the process of separating the fractions by fractional distillation is
known as refining. It is carried out in a petroleum refinery.

 Crude oil is first heated to about 400 °C in a furnace. The vapours

formed are passed into a tall fractionating tower .
 The hydrocarbons with the highest boiling points condense first. They
get collected near the base of the fractionating tower.
 As the vapour rises, the hydrocarbons with lower boiling points
condense at different heights. They get separated in the fractionating
tower to form the different fractions.
 The hydrocarbons with 1-4 carbon atoms, which are gases, do not
condense and escape from the top of the tower. Each fraction obtained
is itself a mixture of several hydrocarbons.
 Some of these are used in the same form as obtained. Others are
further separated by fractional distillation or other methods to give
different products.

Uses of petroleum:
 Products obtained from petroleum are primarily used as fuels.
 In addition, some chemicals obtained from petroleum are used to
make medicines, ointments and cosmetics.
 Further fractional distillation of petroleum fractions yields chemicals
that are used to manufacture materials such as plastics, synthetic
rubber synthetic fibres and explosives.

NATURAL GAS
 Natural gas is found along with petroleum in reservoirs under the
ground. It is chiefly mad up of methane, though butane and propane
are also present in small proportions.
 It can be easily transported through pipes and is a clean non-polluting
fuel, It is stored under high pressure as compressed natural gas (CNG).
CNG is used for power generation.

1. In some parts of India, e.g. Vadodara, CNG is supplied to homes

and factories through pipes and directly used as a fuel.
2. CNG is also now being used as a non- polluting fuel for vehicles.
3. Natural gas is used as a starting material for the manufacture of a
number of chemicals and fertilizers.
4. Deposits of natural gas are found in India in Tripura, Rajasthan,
Maharashtra and in the Krishna-Godavari delta.

ENERGY AND TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT:

 Our energy needs have been increasing at a tremendous pace due to
two main reasons. One is the increase in population. The other more
important reason is that as we progress and develop new
technologies, we need more energy to run new factories, and to power
the new gadgets made by the use of the new technologies.
 For example, the tremendous development in the field of computers in
the last few years has meant that computers are now widely used in
factories, offices, shops and homes. Manufacturing and using these
billions of computers uses up huge amounts of electrical energy.
 Some areas in which energy consumption has increased several times
are as follows:
1. Manufacturing goods in factories uses up huge amounts of energy.
2. In agriculture, energy is needed for running tube-wells, tractors
and other machines. Food processing and storage of food in cold
storage houses uses up huge amounts of energy.
3. Means of transportation require large amounts of energy in the
form of fuels or electricity.
4. We use much more energy at home today due to the increased
number of electrical gadgets, such as refrigerators, air
conditioners, washing machines, etc.
 Electricity is the major source of energy today. The use of electrical
energy has shown a [tremendous surge in the past few decades.
 However, electrical energy is not a natural source of energy and, is
produced in many ways-both by conventional and by non-conventional
sources of energy. Setting up new generation plants is very expensive
and time consuming.

 In India today, the supply of electrical energy is far lower than our
requirements. That is why we suffer power cuts.
 Several of our villages do not have access to electricity. In several
other villages where electricity is available, the supply is insufficient
and unreliable.
 This affects us in several ways. Our food production suffers, as
sufficient electricity for proper irrigation is not available.
 Our industrial production suffers, as factories cannot run full time.
 Shortage of electricity also limits the use of new technologies for
development. All this affects the development of our country.

PREVENTING ENERGY CRISIS

As our energy needs increase at a tremendous pace, an energy crisis in
the near future is a distinct possibility. The steps we need to take to
prevent this are as follows:

Using energy judiciously:

Judicious use of energy implies that we do not waste energy and that we
use energy-efficient methods.

 Not wasting energy:

1. Switching off lights, fans, etc., when not in use. Using air coolers,
air conditioners, room heaters, geysers, etc., only when needed.
2. Reducing the flame while cooking and when the water starts
boiling to save fuel.

 Using methods where energy spent is less:

1. Using CFLs and LEDs, which use less energy, instead of bulbs. CFLs
have toxic mercury in them which LEDs do not have.
2. Using public transport instead of private vehicles as much as
possible; walking or cycling along small distances.
3. Using pressure cookers for cooking.
4. Using efficient smokeless chulhas in houses instead of kerosene,
coal or wood for cooking.
5. Reducing cooking time by soaking pulses for some time before
cooking, and keeping vessels covered while cooking.

 Judicious use of energy has two main advantages:

i. It will delay the energy crisis.
ii. It will give our scientists more time to develop more efficient
alternate sources of energy.

CONSERVATION OF FOSSIL FUELS

 India produces only about thirty per cent of the petroleum that we
need. We import the rest. The exhaustible resources like coal and
petroleum will be finished soon if we do not manage them properly.
 We can also use natural gas as a substitute. The reserves of natural
gas discovered by us have gone up ten times within 20 years.
Alternative sources of energy such as solar, wind, and biomass should
be used in place of fossil fuels.
 Biogas is a cheap and convenient fuel for our rural population. It is
produced from waste products like human waste, cattle dung,
garbage, etc.
 Effective use of biomass to derive many products of industrial and
commercial importance has increased with the progress in
biotechnology.

NEW WORDS
FRACTIONS: Components with different boiling points which are obtained
during fractional distillation
REFINING: process of separating the fractions by fractional distillation.

NOW YOU KNOW

 Materials found on the earth that allow the existence of life and satisfy
the needs of living organisms are called natural resources.
 Renewable resources are those that will either never run out, or those
that are replaced within a reasonable period of time through natural
processes.
 Non-renewable resources are those which once used up cannot be
replaced within a reasonable period of time.
 Conservation is the wise and careful use of resources. It means not
wasting the resources, and also maintaining their quality.
 A fuel is a substance that can be used to produce heat at a reasonable
cost.
 A fuel produced naturally from the remains of plants and animals
buried in soil and rocks is known as a fossil fuel.
 Coal is a fossil fuel formed over millions of years from wood buried
under high pressure.
 The process of conversion of wood into coal is called coalification.
 The process of heating coal in the absence of air is called destructive
distillation of coal. It gives useful products such as coke, coal tar, coal
gas and ammonium compounds.
 Petroleum is a fossil fuel formed over millions of years from the bodies
of dead sea Natural gas is chiefly made up of methane, though butane
and propane are also present in small proportions. Compressed
natural gas (CNG) is a clean non-polluting fuel.
 ] iWe can prevent an energy crisis by using energy judiciously. Solar
energy, wind and biomass are some of the alternative sources of
energy which can be used in place of fossil fuels.