What Are The Primary Causes Of Thermal Pollution?
CAUSES OF THERMAL POLLUTION – In this topic, we are going to know and identify the causes of thermal pollution.
Thermal pollution, also konwn as thermal enrichment, refers to the degradation of water quality by any process that changes ambient water temperature.
Based on EarthEclipse, this pollution occurs when water bodies are degraded via means of altering their temperatures.
- Power, Industrial, and Manufacturing Plants
- These plants are high at discharging lots of heat into water resources nearby. Power generation and production operations emit lots of heat. Thus, factories and power plants draw water from nearby resources to maintain smooth operations. The water is then discharged back into the ocean.
- Industrial Effluents
- This includes drainage from research institutions, hospitals, sugar manufacturing companies, explosives, and nuclear experiments. These effluents emit lots of un-utilized heat and traces of heat absorbing objects into nearby water resources.
- Domestic Sewages
- A common phenomenon where these were discharged into lakes, rivers, streams or canals.
- Urban Stormwater Runoff
- Refers to urban surfaces absorbing heat from the sun and then gets absorbed by the water runoff when it rains and discharges it into nearby sewers.
- Deforestation
- The forest’s role is to reflect back and absorb the sun’s heat. Basically, by chopping them off, the land would get hotter.
- Soil Erosion
- An action or process which involves the removing of soil, rock, or dissolved material from one area from the crust or the other.
- Hydroelectric Power Generation
- This cause leads to thermal loading in water resources. The turning of steam heated turbines heats up the water and dumps it back into the receiving water.
- Natural Causes
- Refers to geothermal activity and active volcanoes below oceans and seas which causes natural underground heating of the water bodies.
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