a) Biomass is organic matter, such as wood by-products and agricultural wastes

that can be burned to produce energy, or converted into a gas and used for
fuel.
b) It contains stored energy from the sun. plants absorb the suns energy
through the process of photosynthesis , and this chemical energy is then
passed on the animals and people that eat them. When burned, the chemical
energy in biomass is released as heat.
c) There are many ways to convert biomass to energy. Biomass can be
converted to other usable forms of energy like methane gas or
transportation fuels like ethanol and biodiesel.
The production of ethanol for transportation sector
a) Ethanol is an alternative fuel produced from starch
contained in grains such as corn, grain sorghum, barley
and sugarcane through a fermentation and distillation
process that converts starch to sugar and then to alcohol.
b) Most ethanol in the U.S is made from corn because it is
relatively low-cost source of starch that can easily be
converted into sugar, fermented and distilled into ethanol.
c) Ethanol can be blended with gasoline to create E85, a
blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. Flex
fuel vehicles are designed to run on any mixture of
gasoline or ethanol with up to 85 percent ethanol.
d) Ethanol can also be produced from cellulosic biomass
such as wheat straw, corn stalks, sawdust, rice hulls ,
paper pulp, wood chips, and energy cane. Which can be
converted into sugars and then fermented into ethanol.
The production of biodiesel for transportation
a) Biodiesel production is based on trans-esterification of vegetable
oils and fats through the addition of methanol and a catalyst ,
giving glycerol as a co-product.
b) Feedstock included rapeseeds, sunflowers seed ,soy seeds and
palm oil seeds from which the oil is extracted chemically or
mechanically.
c) Advanced process include the replacement of methanol of fossil
origin, by bioethanol to produce fatty acid ethyl ester instead of
fatty acid methyl ether.
d) In order to expand the relatively small resource base of biodiesel
, new processes have been developed to use recycled cooking
oils and animal fats though these are limited in volume.
e) Hydrogenation of oils and fats is a new process that I s entering
the market.it can produce a biodiesel that can be blended with
fossil diesel up to 50% without any engine modifications.
f) Synthetic biofuel production via biomass gasification and
catalytic conversion to liquid using Fischer-Tropsch process offers

a variety of potential biofuel production processes that may be

suited to current and future engine technologies.