Biomass Renewable Energy
The words biomass and renewable energy would seem like entirely different ones without any sort of relation between them. Just imagine – the organic waste materials generated as a result of decayed plant waste on side and renewable energy on the other? But the fact is biomass is a large reservoir of solar energy trapped within it as a result of photosynthetic activities in plants, which if tapped out in the right way, can be a natural source of energy.
Renewable energy, as the term suggests, is the energy derived from natural sources like sun, water, organic waste, wind, tides etc which can be replenished by nature. Such energy sources can never get exhausted at any point in time as in the case or non renewable energy sources like fossil fuels.
Apart from plant wastes, other sources of biomass include wood shavings, algae, aquatic plants and residues, cow dung, disposable garbage, sewage wastes, corncobs etc. For it to be used as an energy source, biomass must be converted to energy so that so that it can meet a sizeable percentage of the country’s demand for fuel.
Biomass renewable energy can be harnessed from wastes like agricultural and forest residues- for fuel, organic manures and chemical feed stock, urban and industrial wastes- for fuel in boilers and feed stock for producing methane and some liquid fuels and by the growth of certain energy specific plants.
The collected wastes may be converted into solid, liquid or gaseous fuels using thermal, thermo-chemical and bio-chemical conversions. All these processes work on combustion, pyrolysis, gasification, alcohol fermentation, liquefaction etc. After subjection to these techniques, energy can be produced in the form of thermal, heat and electricity. Solid fuels like charcoal and combustibles and synthetic fuels like methanol, methane, hydrogen gas etc can also be produced.
