Topic 10 - Using Resources (3)

Question 1

FINITE AND RENEWABLE RESOURCES:
What are natural resources?

Answer 1

resources that form without human input (anything that comes from the earth, sea or air)

Question 2

FINITE AND RENEWABLE RESOURCES:
Where does rubber come from?
How is it replaced by synthetic products?

Answer 2

• rubber can be extracted from the sap of a tree
• man-made polymers such as rubber have now been made which can replace rubber in uses such as tyres

Question 3

FINITE AND RENEWABLE RESOURCES:
Give an example of how agriculture provides conditions where natural resources can be enhanced for out needs?

Answer 3

the development of fertilisers have meant we can produce a high yield of crops

Question 4

FINITE AND RENEWABLE RESOURCES:
What are finite (Non-renewable) resources?

Answer 4

resources that aren’t formed quickly enough to be considered replaceable

Question 5

FINITE AND RENEWABLE RESOURCES:
Give 4 examples of finite resources?

Answer 5

• fossil fuels
• nuclear fuels (uranium and plutonium)
• minerals
• metals found in ores

Question 6

FINITE AND RENEWABLE RESOURCES:
Name 3 modern materials that are made from raw, finite resources?

Answer 6

• plastics
• metals
• building materials

Question 7

FINITE AND RENEWABLE RESOURCES:
What are two examples of man made processes natural resources are put through before they are used as fuels and materials in modern life?

Answer 7

• fractional distillation
• reduction of metal ores

Question 8

FINITE AND RENEWABLE RESOURCES:
What are the 3 types of effects that have to be balanced when extracting finite resources?

Answer 8

social
economic
environmental

Question 9

FINITE AND RENEWABLE RESOURCES:
What are 3 benefits of mining metal ores?

Answer 9

• useful products can be made
• provides local people with jobs
• brings money ino the area

Question 10

FINITE AND RENEWABLE RESOURCES:
What are 4 consequenses of mining metal ores?

Answer 10

• uses lots of energy
• scars the landscape
• produces lots of waste
• destroys habitats

Question 11

REUSE AND RECYCLING:
What is sustainable development?

Answer 11

an approach to development that takes into account the needs of present society without damaging the lives of future generations

Question 12

REUSE AND RECYCLING:
How can extracting resources be unsustainable?

Answer 12

the amount of energy used and waste produced

Question 13

REUSE AND RECYCLING:
How can processing resources into useful materials be unsustainable?

Answer 13

it often uses energy made from finite resources

Question 14

REUSE AND RECYCLING:
What is one way of reducing the use of finite resources?

Answer 14

for people to use less
reducing the use of the resource and anything used to produce it

Question 15

REUSE AND RECYCLING:
Give an example of how chemists use lower amounts of finite resources and reduce damge to the environment?

Answer 15

catalysts
reduce the amount of energy needed for certain industrial processes

Question 16

REUSE AND RECYCLING:
How is the extraction of copper made more sustainable?
What are the two ways of doing this?

Answer 16

extracting it from low-grade ores (ores without much copper in)
- bioleaching
- phytomining

Question 17

REUSE AND RECYCLING:
What happens in bioleaching?

Answer 17

• bacteria are used to turn copper compounds in the ore into soluble copper componds, separating out the copper from the ore in the process
• the leachate (the solution produced by the process) contains copper ions, which can be extracted (e.g. by electrolysis or displacement with a more reactive metal like scrap iron

Question 18

REUSE AND RECYCLING:
What happens phytomining?

Answer 18

• involves growing plants in soil that contains copper
• the plant’s can’t use or get ris of the copper so it gradually builds up in their leaves
• the plants can be harvested, dried and burned in a furnace
• the ash contains soluble compounds from which copper can be extracted by electrolysis or displacement using scrap iron

Question 19

REUSE AND RECYCLING:
What are the pros and cons of photomining and bioleaching?

Answer 19

• they have a much smaller impact on the environment than traditional methods
• but they’re slow

Question 20

REUSE AND RECYCLING:
What are the benefits of recycling metals?

Answer 20

• often uses much less energy than is needed to mine and extract new metal
• conserves the finite amount of each metal on earth
• cuts down on the amount of waste getting sent to landfill

Question 21

REUSE AND RECYCLING:
How are metals usually recycled?

Answer 21

melting them and casting them into the shape of the new product

Question 22

REUSE AND RECYCLING:
When recycling metals, what determines the amount of separation required?

Answer 22

what the metal will be used for after recycling

Question 23

REUSE AND RECYCLING:
Give an example of how two metals can be kept together when they are recycled?

Answer 23

waste steel and iron can be kept together as they can both be added to iron in a blast furnace to reduce the amount of iron ore required

Question 24

REUSE AND RECYCLING:
What are two ways that glass recycyling helps sustainability?

Answer 24

• reduces the amount of energy needed to make new glass products
• reduces the amount of waster created when used glass is thrown away

Question 25

REUSE AND RECYCLING: Why are glass bottles easier to reuse?

Answer 25

they can often be reused without reshaping

Question 26

REUSE AND RECYCLING: What happens to forms of glass that cannot be reused?

Answer 26

- they are recycled instead - they are usually separated by colour and chemical composition before being recycled

Question 27

REUSE AND RECYCLING: Describe how glass is recycled?

Answer 27

- they are usually separated by colour and chemical composition before being recycled - the glass is crushed and then melted to be reshaped for use in glass products like bottles or jars

Question 28

REUSE AND RECYCLING: What are two uses for recycled glass?

Answer 28

- for use in glass products like bottles or jars - for a different purpose such as insulating glass wool for wall insulation in homes

Question 29

REUSE AND RECYCLING: What is a blast furnace used for?

Answer 29

extracting iron form its ore at a high temperature using carbon

Question 30

LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENTS: What does a life cycle assessment (LCA) do?

Answer 30

looks at every stage in a product's life to assess the impact it would have on the environment

Question 31

LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENTS: What are the four main parts of a life cycle assessment?

Answer 31

- getting the raw materials - manufacture and packaging - using the product - product disposal

Question 32

LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENTS: Explain 3 ways that extracting raw materials can damage to environment?

Answer 32

- mining metals damages the local environment - extraction can redsult in pollution due to the amount of energy needed - raw materials sometimes need to be extracted to get the desired materials which requires lots of energy (such as extracting metals from ores or fractional distillation of crude oil)

Question 33

LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENTS: Explain how a the manufacturing and packaging process of a product can damage the environment?

Answer 33

- can use a lot of energy resources and cause a lot of pollution, e.g. harmful fumes such as carbon monoxide or hydrogen chloride - waster products need to be disposed of. The chemical reactions used to make compounds from their raw materials can produce waster products - some waster can be turned into useful chemicals reducing the amount that ends up polluting the environment

Question 34

LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENTS: Explain how the process of using a product can damage the environment? Give two examples How can the damage from using a product be reduced

Answer 34

- burning fuels releases greenhouse gases and other harmful substances - fertilisers can leach into streams and rivers causing damage to ecosystems - how long a product is used for or how mant uses it gets is also a factor - producs that need lots of energy to produce but are used for a long time mean less waste in the long run

Question 35

LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENTS: Explain 3 ways that the disposal of products can damage the environment?

Answer 35

- products are often disposed of in landfill sites , this takes up space and pollutes land and water, e.g. if paint washes off a product and into rivers - energy is used to transport waste to landfill, which causes pollutants to be released into the atmosphere - products might be incinerated (burnt), which causes air pollution

Question 36

LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENTS: What are the raw materials used to make plastic and paper bags?

Answer 36

plastic = crude oil paper = timber

Question 37

LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENTS: What happens during the manufacturing and packaging stage for the LCA of a plastic bag?

Answer 37

- the compounds needed to make the plastic are extracted from crude oil by fractional distillation, followed by cracking and then polymerisation - waste is reduced as other fractions of crude oil have other uses

Question 38

LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENTS: What happens during the manufacturing and packaging stage for the LCA of a paper bag?

Answer 38

- pulped timber is processed using lots of energy - lots of waste is made

Question 39

LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENTS: What happens during the using the product stage for the LCA of a plastic bag?

Answer 39

- can be reused - can be used for other things as well as shopping, for example bin liners

Question 40

LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENTS: What happens during the using the product stage for the LCA of a paper bag?

Answer 40

usually only used once

Question 41

LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENTS: What happens during the product disposal stage for the LCA of a plastic bag?

Answer 41

- recyclable but not biodegradable - will take up space in landfill and pollute land

Question 42

LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENTS: What happens during the using the product stage for the LCA of a paper bag?

Answer 42

biodegradable non-toxic can be recycled

Question 43

LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENTS: What do LCAs shows that plastic bags are less harmful to the environment than paper bags?

Answer 43

even though plastic bags are not biodegradable , they take less energy to make and have a longer lifespan than paper bags, so may be less harmful to the environment

Question 44

LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENTS: Explain a problem with LCAs?

Answer 44

- the use of energy, some natural resources and the amount of certain types of waste produced by a product over its lifetime can be easily quantitfied - but the effect of some pollutants is harder to give a numerical value (the negatice visual effects of plastic bags in the environment compared to paper ones)

Question 45

LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENTS: Why is producing an LCA not an objective method?

Answer 45

it takes into account the values of the person carrying out the assessment - they can be biased

Question 46

LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENTS: What are selective LCAs? How can they cause issues?

Answer 46

- they only show some of the impacts of a product on the environment - they can be biased as they can be written to deliberately support the claims of a company, in order to give them positive advertising