Biomass as Energy Source

Biomass energy is derived from biological material, plants and animal tissue. Like dead trees, vegetation, tree branches, wood chips, old crops, manure as well as garbage or waste.

One can extract an abundance of valuable stored energy from them in one form or the other. The stored energy in these materials is in the form of chemical energy produced by the sun when they were in the living process, using carbon dioxide and water from its surrounding.

The energy is released by burning (incinerate) the material directly, or by feeding it to micro-organisms that use it to make biogas (a form of natural gas).The released energy is used for cooking, heating, generate electricity and making fuel.

It’s available from agriculture, forest products, construction and it can grow in the wild. There are cultivations especially for the production of this type of energy. It is a large renewable energy source. This energy field is rapidly in development. Some countries do not possess much vegetation due to their dryness and thus rely mostly on waste materials, but others can have a good energy production due to their richness in vegetation and forests.

The extracted energy can have the form of solid, liquid as well gas. Biogas for example can be produced from cow dung and used for lighting and cooking and its waste used as manure. Rotten vegetation can produce methane gas. Like the conventional way we use coal or oil to produce electricity we can replace them with Biomass products and obtain the necessary conversion of energy. Other derived liquids are biodiesel and ethanol. Alcohol, a clean type of fuel, can be produced by fermentation of sugar cane and when burnt, release energy. The cane itself and its pulp can be burned to run generators so to produce electricity.

It is considered clean energy source because when burnt it release carbon dioxide and when in growing process it takes back carbon dioxide from the atmosphere so resulting in a give and take cycle that is in balance, no carbon footprint, is environmental friendly and reduce global warming effect. Burning more than what is growing result in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. To be a sustainable energy source, its use must be well managed. As with any other type of sustainable energy. In the U.S. this is the number 1 source of renewable energy as per 2006 leading Hydroelectric energy sources according to Window on State Government.

Many factories in the U.S. is now burning their own waste products to generate part of their electricity needs and doing so also solve part of their disposal problem.

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