Nov 30 2007

Biomass Posted by Steve Chan in Untagged

Biomass is an abundant and underutilized resource, which remains to be effectively used on a commercial and societal scale. It is also the term used for the use of wood products to heat homes and businesses.  Biomass refers to living and recently dead biological material that can be used as fuel or for industrial production. It is an organic material made from plants and animals and is in abundance. 

Biomass is grown from several plants, including miscanthus, hemp, corn, poplar, willow and sugarcane.  Biomass may also include biodegradable wastes that can be burnt as fuel. Biomass is any organic material made from plants or animals.  Biomass is a renewable energy coming from biological material such as trees, plants, manure, and sometimes waste. 

Biomass is derived from many types of waste organic matter, both animal and vegetable, such as crop stalks, tree thinning, wooden pallets, construction waste, chicken and pig waste, agricultural waste and lawn trimmings and many other forms of waste.  

Biomass fuels can be used to create energy directly or indirectly; they can be used as a heat source in their own right or can be burned to produce steam in order to produce electricity; the latter being more suited to a commercial process than a domestic environment.

Biomass fuels also have a number of environmental benefits.  It contains stored energy from the sun.  Biomass is a renewable energy source because we can always grow more trees and crops, and waste will always exist.

Biomass can be converted to other usable forms of energy and is an attractive petroleum alternative for a number of reasons. There are many other ways that biomass can be used, it can be converted to other usable forms of energy like methane gas or transportation fuels like ethanol and biodiesel. 

Biomass is part of the carbon cycle. Biomass reduces air pollution by being a part of the carbon cycle, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by ninety percent, compared with fossil fuels. Biomass can pollute the air when it is burned, though not as much as fossil fuels. Biomass recycles carbon from the air and spares the use of fossil fuels, reducing the need to pump additional fossil carbon from the ground into the atmosphere.  

Biomass can create employment, and already supports sixty six thousand jobs in the United States; the department of energy has set a goal of three times that many jobs being created.