Friday, November 18, 2011

Biomass - Environmentally Insensitive to Burn?

By Abe Monhegan


When talking about alternative energy, one must remember about biomass. While the name sounds a little "high tech", that it is the oldest form of heating. Biomass actually refers to biological material that's either living or recently dead. When talking about it in the alternative energy sense, we are typically referring to plant matter. The most typical example that comes to mind is burning wood.

Indeed, up to in regards to a century ago wood was the main heating source for man. Many people still tried on the extender today in wood stoves within their home as well as the newer and more environmentally friendly wood pellet stoves.

Biomass, being plant matter, is renewable because you can simply plant more of the trees or no matter what biological material you are using. If used responsibly, you'd never exhaust your supply which is renewable since you would always be planting new trees to replace those you accustomed to produce energy.

However, biomass is a part of the carbon cycle and burning it releases co2 in to the air. If used properly, it's really a carbon neutral fuel though because the living plants actually absorb co2. So if you're planting as many baby plants as you are burning, then you'll have a neutral effect when it comes to carbon dioxide.

Biomass doesn't have to refer to just plants though it may also be animal matter too. Even garbage might be considered biomass however i don't believe you would burn it in your wood stove! Yet, you don't have to burn biomass to release its energy - it can be converted into methane or ethanol or even by biodiesel.

When it comes to greenhouse gases, this is often a very good thing because methane, that is released within our landfills, dairies and cattle feed lots, has 21 times the worldwide warming potential that carbon dioxide has. Therefore, collecting the methane and taking advantage of it for wind turbine could reduce harmful green house gases which contribute to climatic change.

Biomass fuel has an additional as it is very versatile. Unlike wind or solar energy which could simply be stored as electricity in batteries or used immediately, biomass can be created into a gas for heating and burning, a liquid for fueling cars or even a bricklike briquette like charcoal.

With our way to obtain fossil fuels quickly running out, you will probably be hearing more and more about research being done on how to harness the green, alternative energy of biomass fuels.




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