All About Biomass Energy
Biomass from renewable plant and animal materials can be used to produce heat or power. Burning biomass to produce power results in substantially fewer harmful emissions when compared to traditional sources of power generation. Biomass-combustion flue gases have high moisture content. When the flue gas is cooled to a temperature below the dew point, water vapor starts to condense. Biomass (organic matter) can be used to provide heat, make fuels, chemicals and other products, and generate electricity. Wood, the largest source of bioenergy, has been used to provide heat for thousands of years.
Biomass fuels also have a number of environmental benefits . Biomass is obtained from organic matter, either directly from plants or indirectly from industrial, commercial, domestic or agricultural products. Energy crops, such as miscanthus and short-rotation coppice or plant and animal matter such as forest products, waste wood, straw, slurry, chicken litter, and industrial and municipal wastes (such as food processing wastes) can be used to generate heat and electricity. Biomass (organic matter) can be used to provide heat, generate electricity and provide chemical feedstock. Also, unlike other renewable energy sources, biomass can be converted directly into liquid or gaseous fuels for our transportation needs.
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What exactly Biofuels?
Biofuels provide a potential route to avoiding the global political instability and environmental issues that arise from reliance on petroleum. Currently, most biofuel is in the form of ethanol generated from starch or sugar, but this can meet only a limited fraction of global fuel requirements. Biofuels are a dead end that will slow the adoption of the only feasible solution for personal highway travel. Electrical cars powered by batteries or capacitors are the most technically available and environmentally benign solution. Biofuels are considered neutral with respect to the emission of carbon dioxide because the carbon dioxide given off by burning them is balanced by the carbon dioxide absorbed by the plants that are grown to produce them. The use of biofuels as an additive to petroleum-based fuels can also result in cleaner burning with less emission of carbon monoxide and particulates.
Biofuels in the North are generally derived from feedstocks such as corn and rapeseed that have low energy efficiency and require expensive inputs. And since most arable land in the North is already under cultivation, biofuels are likely to compete with food crops if expansion continues. Biofuel will affect the Amazon rain forest in four ways. First, there will be increased biofuel production in some form. Biofuel means using biological material for energy. Like burning wood in a woodstove for heat.
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Biomass Renewable Sources of Energy
The most widespread variety of biomass is wood. For many centuries, people have burned wood for heating and cooking. Wood was the main resource of energy in the U.S. and the rest of the world till the mid-18th century. Biomass persists to be a chief resource of energy in the developing world. In United States, wood and waste offer only about 2 percent of the energy used today.
About 84 percent of the total wood and wood waste fuel used in the United States is consumed by the industry, electric power producers, and commercial businesses. The rest, mainly wood, is used in homes for heating and cooking.
Various industrialized plants in the wood and paper products industry make use of wood waste to manufacture their own steam and electricity. This saves these companies financially as they neither have to dispose off their waste nor they have to buy electricity.
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