Question

What are the end products of the burning or metabolism of oil

Where does the energy produced come from?

What would you make of an ad for an oil lamp that promising to regenerate the oil it uses as it burns

Answer 1

Ans. #1. The end products of burning or metabolizing (aerobic respiration) oil are-

Oil + O₂ --------------> CO₂ + H₂O + Energy

If oil is burnt, the energy is released in the form of heat and light.

If oil is metabolized by organisms, the energy is harvested in form of ATP and heat.

#2. The sole source of energy on the earth is the solar energy.

During photosynthesis, the photoautotrophs transform the solar energy (E = hv) into chemical energy as follow-

CO₂ + H₂O ---Solar energy (hv)- Photosynthesis-----> Cn(H₂O)n (carbohydrates)

The solar energy is used to form chemical bonds between CO₂ and H₂O in carbohydrates. The chemical bonds, when broken during burning or metabolism, release the same energy that was stored in them during photosynthesis.

# Carbohydrates may directly or indirectly be used to produce vegetable oils by plants. Animal eat the vegetable oil and generate energy from it through metabolism.

# When animals die and decay, they gradually transform into mineral oil (petroleum oil) through fossilization over very long periods.

#3. The “ad” is misleading.

The oil lamp burns oils (be it vegetable or petroleum oil) into CO₂ and H₂O.

The rate of burning is extremely fast.

However, the rate of formation of oil (especially mineral oil) may take millions of years. Even in case of vegetable oils, the CO₂ released during burning, is not instantly taken up by plants form photosynthesis. It may remain in the atmosphere for long periods before fixed through photosynthesis.

So, on a time scale, burning oil takes minutes whereas synthesis of oil may take relatively extremely long time, say few years (vegetable oils) or millions of years.

So, the term “regeneration of oil” is practically misleading because it may take very long time.