What is Biomass?

Biomass energy is energy produced from organic materials. These materials include wood, bagasses, crop residues, solid waste, animal wastes, sewage, and waste from food processing. Biomass is made up mainly of the elements carbon and hydrogen; technologies exist that free the energy from chemical compounds made up of these elements.

biomass can be considered as a form of stored solar energy. The energy of the sun is "captured" through the process of photosynthesis in growing plants. Systems ecologists also call stored energy, "embodied energy", and in some instances "emergy". From this perspective, biomass, or stored solar energy, is an eqivalent expression for "solar emergy".

Resources

Herbaceous Energy Crops Aquatic Crops Woody Energy Crops Agricultural Crops Industrial Crops Agriculture Crop Residues Municipal Waste Biomass Processing Residues Animal Wastes

Biomass Applications:

1. Residential 2. Commercial/Industial 3. Utility

Commercial-Industrial
Businesses and industry use biomass for several purposes including space heating, hot water heating, and electricity generation. Many industrial facilities, such as lumber mills, naturally produce organic waste. megawatt range.

Electrical Power Generation

Power from biomass is a proven commercial electricity generation at present.biomass is the single largest source of non-hydro renewable electricity. The biomass fuel is burned in a boiler to produce high-pressure steam. This steam is introduced into a steam turbine, where it flows over a series of aerodynamic turbine blades, causing the turbine to rotate. The turbine is connected to an electric generator, so as the steam flow causes the turbine to rotate, the electric generator turns and electricity is produced.

Biomass and the Environment

Biomass absorbs carbon dioxide during growth, and emits it during combustion. Therefore, it "recycles" atmospheric carbon and does not add to the greenhouse effect. Low levels of sulfur and ash prevent biomass from contributing to the acid rain phenomenon. Nitrous oxide production can be controlled through modern biomass combustion techniques.

Half a kilo of dry plant tissue can produce as much as 1890 KCal of heat which is equivalent to the heat available from a quarter of kilogram of coal

How biomass works ?

The waste wood, tree branches and other scraps are gathered together in big trucks.The trucks bring the waste from factories and from farms to a biomass power plant. Here the biomass is dumped into huge hoppers. This is then fed into a furnace where it is burned. The heat is used to boil water in the boiler, and the energy in the steam is used to turn turbines and generators . Biomass can also be tapped right at the landfill with burning waster products. When garbage decomposes, it gives off methane gas. natural gas is made up of methane. Pipelines are put into the landfills and the methane gas can be collected. It is then used in power plants to make electricity. This type of biomass is called landfill gas. A similar thing can be done at animal feed lots. In places where lots of animals are raised, the animals - like cattle, cows and even chickens produce manure. When manure decomposes, it also gives off methane gas similar to garbage. This gas can be burned right at the farm to make energy to run the farm.

New ways of using biomass are still being discovered

Ethanol a liquid alcohol fuel. Ethanol can be used in special types of cars that are made for using alcohol fuel instead of gasoline. The alcohol can also be combined with gasoline. This reduces our dependence on oil - a non-renewable fossil fuel. Biodiesel Biodiesel is produced through a process in which organically derived oils are combined with alcohol (ethanol or methanol) in the presence of a catalyst to form ethyl or methyl ester.

Prominent biomass uses today include ethanol and biodiesel fuel additives and process heat and power generation with paper mill and forestry residues.

There are several ways of capturing the stored chemical energy in biomass:

Direct Combustion Pyrolysis Anaerobic Digestion Gasification Alcohol Fermentation Landfill Gas Cogeneration

Direct Combustion

Direct combustion is the burning of material by direct heat. Biomass such as wood, garbage, manure, straw, and biogas can be burned without processing to produce hot gases for heat or steam. This process ranges from burning wood in fireplaces to burning garbage in a fluidized bed boiler to produce heat or steam to generate electric power. Direct combustion is the simplest biomass technology and may be very economical if the biomass source is nearby.

Pyrolysis

Pyrolysis is the thermal degradation of biomass by heat in the absence of oxygen. Biomass feedstocks, such as wood or garbage, are heated to a temperature between 800 and 1400 deg.F, but no oxygen is introduced to support combustion. Pyrolysis results in three products: gas, fuel oil, and charcoal

Anaerobic Digestion

Anaerobic digestion converts organic matter to a mixture of methane, the major component of natural gas, and carbon dioxide. Biomass such as wastewater (sewage), manure, or food processing wastes, is mixed with water and fed into a digester tank without air.

Gasification

Biomass can be used to produce methane through heating or anaerobic digestion. a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, can be derived from biomass.

Alcohol Fermentation

Fuel alcohol is produced by converting starch to sugar, fermenting the sugar to alcohol, then separating the alcohol water mixture by distillation. Feedstocks such as wheat, barley, potatoes, waste paper, sawdust, and straw contain sugar, starch, or cellulose and can be converted to alcohol by fermentation with yeast. Ethanol, also called ethyl alcohol or grain alcohol, is the alcohol product of fermentation usable for various industrial purposes including alternative fuel for internal combustion engines.

Landfill Gas

Landfill gas is generated by the decay (anaerobic digestion) of buried trash and garbage in landfills. When the organic waste decomposes, it generates gas consisting of approximately 50 percent methane, the major component of natural gas.

Cogeneration

Cogeneration is the simultaneous production of more than one form of energy using a single fuel and facility. Furnaces, boilers, or engines fueled with biogas can cogenerate electricity for on-site use or sale. Biomass cogeneration has more potential growth than biomass generation alone because cogeneration produces both heat and electricity. Cogeneration results in net fuel use efficiencies of over 60 percent compared to about 37 percent for simple combustion. Electric power generators can become cogenerators by using residual heat from electric generation for process heat, however, waste heat recovery alone is not cogeneration

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