Electric heating uses relatively inexpensive tools to directly convert electrical energy into heat energy with a conversion efficiency of roughly 100%. Applications that are frequently used include industrial processes, cooking, water heating, and space heating. An electrical appliance that transforms an electric current into heat is called an electric heater. Every electric heater contains a heating element that is an electrical resistor and operates on the principle of Joule heating. When an electric current flows through a resistor, the electrical energy is transformed into heat energy. The active element in most contemporary electric heaters is nichrome wire; the heating element shown on the right is nichrome wire supported by ceramic insulators.
Wood is considered humankind’s very first source of energy. Today it is still the most important single source of renewable energy providing about 6 percent of the global total primary energy supply. More than two billion people depend on wood energy for cooking and/or heating, particularly in households in developing countries. It represents the only domestically available and affordable source of energy. Private households’ cooking and heating with woodfuels represents one third of the global renewable energy consumption, making wood the most decentralized energy in the world. Woodfuels arise from multiple sources including forests, other wooded land and trees outside forests, co-products from wood processing, post-consumer recovered wood and processed wood-based fuels. Wood energy is also an important emergency backup fuel. Societies at any socio-economic level will switch easily back to wood energy when encountering economic difficulties, natura...


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