Ralf Littke – författare

This is the first book that analyses the future raw materials supply from the demand side of a society that chiefly relies on renewable energies, which is of great significance for us all.

This is the first book that analyses the future raw materials supply from the demand side of a society that chiefly relies on renewable energies, which is of great significance for us all. It addresses primary and secondary resources and substitution, not only from technical but also socioeconomic and ethical points of view.The “Energiewende” (Energy Transition) will change our consumption of natural resources significantly. When in future our energy requirements will be covered mostly by wind, solar power and biomass, we will need less coal, oil and natural gas. However, the consumption of minerals, especially metallic resources, will increase to build wind generators, solar panels or energy storage facilities. Besides e.g. copper, nickel or cobalt, rare earth elements and other high-tech elements will be increasingly used. With regard to primary metals, Germany is 100 % import dependent; only secondary material is produced within Germany. Though sufficient geological primary resources exist worldwide, their availability on the market is crucial. The future supply of the market is dependent on the development of prices, the transparency of the market and the question of social and ethical standards in the raw materials industry, as well as the social license to operate, which especially applies to mining. The book offers a valuable resource for everyone interested in the future raw material supply of our way of life, which will involve more and more renewable energies.

This is a summary of seven years of research conducted by the author at the Institute of Petroleum and Organic Geochemistry in Juelich, Germany. It contains a comparison of various depositional environments (lakes, deltas and seas) with respect to organic matter characteristics, a special chapter on the deposition of the Posidonia shale, a summary of organic matter maturation and related petroleum generation, and a chapter on the use of maturation parameters as calibration tools for numerical modelling of the temperature histories of sedimentary basins. Also, the microscopic effects of petroleum generation and oil to gas cracking are treated. The final chapters deal with coals as source rocks for oil and gas and with the effects of weathering on sediments which are rich in organic matter.

Sedimentary basins host, among others, most of our energy and fresh-water resources: they can be regarded as large geo-reactors in which many physical and chemical processes interact. Their complexity can only be well understood in well-organized interdisciplinary co-operations. This book documents how researchers from different geo-scientific disciplines have jointly analysed the structural, thermal, and sedimentary evolution as well as fluid dynamics of a complex sedimentary basin system which has experienced a variety of activation and reactivation impulses as well as intense salt tectonics. In this book we have summarized our geological, geophysical and geochemical understanding of some of the most important processes affecting sedimentary basins in general and our view on the evolution of one of the largest, best explored and most complex continental sedimentary basins on Earth: The Central European Basin System.