Choose Renewable Sources, Advantages of Biomass for Power Generation
A review of alternative energy approaches will show the significant advantages of biomass, and a key characteristic is that combustion does not add to carbon cycle in the unsustainable way that fossil fuels do. As the levels of carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas, continue to rise, the need to address the sources is urgent the world is to avoid irreversible climate change.
As a material drawn from a broad range of organic sources, biomass fits the renewable energy category and can be deployed for generating power. Among the sources available are tree roots, branches, wood chips and shavings together with various agricultural wastes like crop residues, manure and silage. A biomass reactor can also be fuelled by specially grown grasses like miscanthus, switch grass and hemp or from trees like poplar and willow, or using wood pellet by-products.
Clearly one of the significant advantages of biomass is the capacity significantly to reduce the burning of fossil fuels to generate heat, steam and electricity in residential, industrial and farming settings. There is also the fact that biomass is highly available relative to other fuels. As it is possible to continuously replant biomass sources, this fuel is reasonably described as renewable, because carbon released during the burning process is sequestered when plants grow, and so this source is also properly described as carbon neutral.
Using wastes from crops such as straw and husks as a by-product to produce biomass fuel actually increases the value of the original source crops. When carbon dioxide is released during the combustion process, a carbon sink to sequester this greenhouse gas will start with replanting and oxygen will also be released into the atmosphere as photosynthesis proceeds.
With the ever present pressure on landfill sites to take municipal waste streams, the idea of getting biomass from these sites will ultimately see a cut in waste volumes accumulating in these locations, which are the cause of significant releases of methane, a greenhouse gas with over twenty times the potency of carbon dioxide.
Another of the advantages of biomass is the use of these organic materials in such a way that they have less adverse environmental impact than when these sources are used in combustion. Effectively through a process of anaerobic digestion, waste is turned into gases which can then be used to drive turbines, instead of process where biomass is burnt and then sufficient trees need to be planted as a carbon sink to recover the carbon dioxide released.
Increased combustion efficiency can be achieved in transport vehicles by employing ethanol derived from biomass in a variety of new biofuel mixes, with the added benefit of being cleaner burning than the traditional longer chain carbon fossil fuels. Evidently biomass fuels have uses in producing heat and electricity as well as an alternative transport fuel to petroleum derivatives.
Clearly, governments at all levels need to tackle both climate change and energy security concerns when they permit new renewable energy plants. They also need to take into account the need to ensure a sufficient level of steady baseload supply and not merely extra sources which meet peak demands. The sun doesn’t always shine, sometimes there is no wind and tides have slack water, periods when no power is generated, whereas the advantages of biomass sources is the absence of this disadvantage.
Coming from the magical island of Anglesey in Wales, UK, the author, David Phillips, manages a helpful online resource focusing on local news and information. Learn more about Anglesey biomass projects and the prospects for this energy island.
