User:Milton Beychok/Sandbox

Biomass, a source of renewable energy, is biological material such as wood, wood waste, municipal solid waste, straw, sugar cane, algae, and many other byproducts derived from agricultural and forestry production as well as other sources. Since biomass derives from plants generated by solar energy in the photosynthesis process, it can also be defined as the biological material on Earth that has stored solar energy in the chemical bonds of the organic material.

The fossil fuels (coal, petroleum crude oil and natural gas) are currently thought to have been formed from prehistoric, ancient biomass buried deeply underground over millions of years of geological time. Therefore, they are not considered to be renewable sources of energy

Uses of biomass

Biomass fuel for electric power production

The direct combustion of biomass for producing heat and electric power provides a ready disposal mechanism for municipal, agricultural, and industrial organic wastes. In 2009, about 11,350 megawatts (MW) of electric power, amounting to 1.1% of the summertime electrical supply in the United States was generated by burning biomass that included: wood, wood waste, municipal solid waste (MSW), landfill gas, and agricultural byproducts and waste.

The New Hope Power Partnership in Florida is the largest biomass power plant in North America. It generates 140 MW of power using uses sugar cane fiber (bagasse) and recycled wood as fuel. It has been in operation for more than 10 years.

Production of ethanol and biodiesel as liquid transport fuels

There are several processes available for converting the chemical energy contained in biomass into liquid automotive transport fuels such as biodiesel and ethanol.

Ethanol fuel:

Ethanol fuel is ethyl alcohol (C₂H₅OH) and it is most often used as an automotive motor fuel, mainly as an additive for gasoline. Ethanol can be produced by fermentation of sugar cane, bagasse, sugar beets, barley, potatoes, corn and many other grains as well as many agricultural byproducts and wastes.

The worldwide production of ethanol for automotive fuel in 2007 was 52,000,000,000 litres. From 2007 to 2008, the share of ethanol in global gasoline use increased from 3.7% to 5.4%. In 2009, worldwide ethanol fuel production reached 73,900,000,000 litres (19,500,000,000 gallons) and was expected to reach 85,900,000,000 litres in 2010.

Ethanol fuel is widely used in Brazil and in the United States, and together both countries were responsible for about 86 percent of the world's ethanol fuel production in 2009.

Biodiesel fuel:

Biodiesel refers to a diesel fuel produced by chemically reacting lipids such as vegetable oils or animal fats with an alcohol such as methyl alcohol. The resulting biodiesel consists of esters of long-chain fatty acids. The process is known as "transesterification" and it may be carried out by several methods: the common batch process, supercritical processes and ultrasonic methods.

In 2009, the worldwide production of biodiesel was 17,900,000,000 litres. The three countries with the largest annual biodiesel production were Germany (16%), France (12%) and the United States (11%).