Biomass offers other significant environmental and consumer benefits, including improving forest health, protecting air quality, and offering the most dependable renewable energy source. You can read about how we turn biomass and other residuals into energy here. Careers Contact Us. Renewable Energy. What is Biomass? Some examples of materials that make up biomass fuels are: scrap lumber; forest debris; certain crops; manure; and some types of waste residues.
Biomass is a renewable source of fuel to produce energy because: waste residues will always exist — in terms of scrap wood, mill residuals and forest resources; and properly managed forests will always have more trees, and we will always have crops and the residual biological matter from those crops.
What is biomass power? These numbers are vastly different to the plus years of payback time estimated by Sterman, so what makes Danish biomass energy different to the kind of process seen at Drax? Calculating the carbon payback time for a specific supply chain can play a significant role in helping to fine-tune management practices and minimize emissions. Scott Bentsen explains that there are a number of key differences. In this Danish study, the plant burns wood chips rather than pellets, which reduces processing energy.
Furthermore, the wood is sourced locally from mixed forests in a cold temperate region, which have different growing characteristics from trees in a warm temperate region. And the energy it produces is maximized, producing both heat for local houses and electricity. He believes that calculating the carbon payback time for a specific supply chain can play a significant role in helping to fine-tune the management practices and minimize emissions from individual biomass energy plants Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 73 Sterman accepts that there are arguments for using timber industry waste as a biofuel.
Energy form: UK biomass plants use wood pellets of leftover material from managed forests. Instead, McQueen Mason is investigating ways of making gas and liquid fuel from biomass, by getting micro-organisms and bacteria to munch their way through woody material, and collecting the resulting gas and liquid produced as the bugs digest the biomass. Pilot plants using sugar cane residue are already proving promising and could provide a solution to the vexing problem of de-carbonizing the petrochemical industry.
But even if living trees can claw back these carbon-dioxide emissions relatively quickly, there is a danger in front-loading our emissions in this way. And even if it remains as forest, wild fire, insect damage, disease and other ecological stresses including climate change itself may limit or prevent regrowth, so that the carbon debt incurred by biomass energy is never repaid. Kate Ravilious is a contributing editor to environment and energy at Physics World , www. Close search menu Submit search Type to search.
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Enter e-mail address This e-mail address will be used to create your account. Reset your password. There are many opportunities to further reduce the conflict between food and fuel production, including an increased use of agricultural wastes, logging residues, food scraps, municipal solid waste, and marginal lands.
Another issue heavily associated with biomass production is greenhouse gas emissions from land management and land use change.
These refer to emissions of greenhouse gases especially CO2, CH4, and N2O resulting from agricultural inputs, management practices, and land use changes associated with production of biomass.
These emissions can be divided into direct and indirect sources. Direct emissions refer to those resulting from land clearing, agricultural inputs such as fertilizers , or management practices undertaken in the process of growing or harvesting a biomass crop. Indirect emissions are associated with market-driven land use change. These are the emissions that occur when forests, grasslands, or other ecosystems are cleared to produce crops or other commodities to compensate for land that has been diverted to energy production.
The effects are difficult to quantify or attribute, making indirect emissions from land use change ILUC a very controversial subject. Finally, it is important to remember that biomass markets will add value to biomass products, residues, and productive lands. This value will help improve the economic viability of working lands and act as a positive incentive to help preserve farms and forests from the accelerating threat of urban and suburban sprawl — the greatest land use impact.
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