What resources are nonrenewable?

Answer 1

The term non-renewable resource is applied to materials that have a finite supply and can be exhausted with use. This is normally applied to fossil fuels, such as coal, oil, and natural gas, even though the supply (while finite) is very large. This is because the existing forms cannot be recreated within a reasonable amount of time on a feasible scale.

Other resources (such as trees, fish, biomass methane) are said to be renewable because biological activities can, with proper management, provide new materials from the raw elements of the Earth.
Coal

Answer 2

Natural gas- APEX

Answer 3

A renewable resource is one where the supply grows or replenishes itself with time. (Examples: Fish, trees, cows, methane from anaerobic digestion). The term is sometimes expanded to include resources like geothermal energy, wind or sunshine which are not depleted in any measurable fashion by use.

A material which is in finite (even if large) supply (petroleum, helium, uranium) is non-renewable as we are working from a limited supply. New supplies cannot be made by any present technology (no Star Trek replicators). When the present supply (exploited and unexploited) is done, it is gone.

* Ah, but "What about plutonium?" you might ask. "We make that in Breeder Reactors!" Sorry but no. Plutonium is a manufactured product using uranium ore as a starting point. When the radioactives are all fissioned we are out of them until we create fusion reactors.

A non-renewable recoverable or recyclablematerial is a material which can be used once, then recovered and reworked since it is unchanged by physical changes (gold is a good example, basically gold today can contain recovered gold from thousands of years in the past). Note though, that once the gold in use equals the amount of gold we have in total, we're in the same position as a non-renewable resource and we can't make any more.

Some others, like Mercury, fall into the non-renewable recyclable category. When we use up what we've got (mine every bit) we're done. Unlike gold, mercury is chemically active. It turns to oxides. It is also volatile, whenever it gets exposed to air a bit goes off as vapour. So we lose it in a non-recoverable fashion and the supply is constantly being depleted

Examples of non-renewable resources

In the field of energy, they include:

• coal
• lignite
• oil
• natural gas
• shale oil

In the field of materials,

• gold
• diamonds
• iron ore
• bauxite (aluminium)

*The last two are in finite, but extremely large supply in the Earth's crust. They are not destroyed as a result of their use, but may be converted back to oxides.