What best describes how fossils fuels form?

Answer 1

decayed orgasnisms are compressed underground

Answer 2

Fossil fuels were formed from plants and animals that lived up to about 300 million years ago.

The Sun passed solar energy to the plants, and plants were eaten by animals. When the plants and animals died and started decaying, some of them got buried deep under the ground for many millions of years, where they turned into fossil fuels like coal, gas and crude oil.

We burn that coal and oil to turn them into heat energy. Heat energy is transformed in power plants into electricity that goes through the power lines to our homes, then powers our televisions, computers, etc.

There are three basic categories of fossil fuels: coal, petroleum (or crude oil), and natural gas

More on Fossil Fuels

Fossil fuel is a hydrocarbon deposit occurring within the Earth's crust, such as petroleum, coal, or natural gas, which when burned with oxygen produce energy.

Fossil Fuels were formed as a result of geologic processes acting on the remains of plants and animals that lived and died hundreds of millions of years ago and got buried in the Earth's crust. The process of fossil fuels formation involved the exposure of these biological remains to extreme pressure and heat, and also took hundreds of millions of years.

Due to the extreme conditions and the time frame of the formation process, recreating it by humans is practically impossible. Hence the fossil fuels are considered the non-renewable ones.

Although some available processes (such as biomass) can create replacements for fossil fuels, many of these are inefficient, or require more energy to create than they ultimately produce.

Besides energy, the other major uses of fossil fuels are to make plastics (petroleum based) and fertilizer (from natural gas).

Answer 3

Fossil fuel was formed over hundreds of millions of years ago by decomposing plants. After a long period of time, layers and layers of rock, mud, and sand covered the dead plants thousands of feet under the earth, which fossilized them.

Oil and natural gas were formed the same way, but coal was formed a slightly different way. The first two were formed by organisms - plankton and plants mostly - that lived in fresh water and they were buried under rivers and oceans. After a long period of time the water receded back. The pressure and bacteria combined to make oil and natural gas. Oil and natural gas started to rise up from under ground but then it stopped, because of caprock, really hard rock that these two cannot move through. The caprock holds them back so that they cannot spill to the surface. When the petroleum companies drill down through the caprock, if they are lucky they find oil and natural gas under them, and that's how it is captured today.

Coal is formed almost the same way but different. It was created by dead remains of trees, ferns and other plants that lived 300 to 400 millions of years ago. Coal was found in swamps covered by seawater. Since the sea has a lot of sulfur it stayed behind in the coal, when the water receded. Unless it is removed when it is being burned, the sulfur goes into our air when the coal is burned, In some parts of the world there were freshwater swamps, coal from here has less sulfur and is much cleaner then the other swamps.

In many ways oil, natural gas, and coal are formed the same way. In the future maybe scientists will take the sulfur from coal so we would not have air pollution. But since they were all produced over millions of years, in the future we will run out of all the types of fossil fuel. We are using them up much faster than they can be produced and fossil fuel plants are where most of our electricity comes from now.

Answer 4

All fossil fuels are made of plant matter, mainly from the Carboniferous Period. This matter is buried underground and is compressed into peat, then lignite, bitumous coal, then anthracite coal. In the case of oil, it liquifies after being buried. Natural gas is the gas released when the plants rot.

Answer 5

They are made form the body parts of life that lived on the earth in past times. This life (as it does today) trapped sunlight energy and once it died and was buried, the chemicals holding this energy change into fossil fuels. When you burn them they release the energy of that past sunlight.

Answer 6

Fossil fuels are formed from decrayed oraganic matter.

Answer 7

Decaying organisms are compressed underground. (Apex)

Answer 8

Plants and animals decompose underground.

Apex

Answer 9

Over a period of millions of years apex