Biomass refers to living and recently dead biological material that can be used as fuel or for industrial production. Most commonly, biomass refers to plant matter grown for use as biofuel, but it also includes plant or animal matter used for production of fibres, chemicals or heat. Biomass may also include biodegradable wastes that can be burnt as fuel. It excludes organic material which has been transformed by geological processes into substances such as coal or petroleum.

Biodiesel Future Energy

Biomass is organic material made from plants and animals. Biomass contains stored energy from the sun. Plants absorb the sun's energy in a process called photosynthesis. The chemical energy in plants gets passed on to animals and people that eat them. Biomass is a renewable energy source because we can always grow more trees and crops, and waste will always exist. Some examples of biomass fuels are wood, crops, manure, and some garbage.

When burned, the chemical energy in biomass is released as heat. If you have a fireplace, the wood you burn in it is a biomass fuel. Wood waste or garbage can be burned to produce steam for making electricity, or to provide heat to industries and homes.

Burning biomass is not the only way to release its energy. Biomass can be converted to other usable forms of energy like methane gas or transportation fuels like ethanol and biodiesel. Methane gas is the main ingredient of natural gas. Smelly stuff, like rotting garbage, and agricultural and human waste, release methane gas - also called "landfill gas" or "biogas." Crops like corn and sugar cane can be fermented to produce the biofuel, transportation fuel, ethanol. Biodiesel, another transportation fuel, can be produced from left-over food products like vegetable oils and animal fats.

Biomass fuels provide about 3 percent of the energy used in the United States. People in the USA are trying to develop ways to burn more biomass and less fossil fuels. Using biomass for energy can cut back on waste and support agricultural products grown in the United States. Biomass fuels also have a number of environmental benefits.

Biofuels Forum
Biomass Forum
Bioenergy Forum

Sunday, August 24, 2008

[renewable-energy] New rays of hope for solar power's future

New rays of hope for solar power's future

As the first commercial concentrating solar power or CSP plant built
in 17 years, Nevada
Solar One marks the reemergence and updating of a decades-old
technology that could
play a large new role in US power production, many observers say.

"Concentrating solar is pretty hot right now," says Mark Mehos,
program manager for
CSP at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden,
Co. "Costs look pretty
good compared to natural gas [power]. Public policy, climate
concern, and new
technology are driving it, too." Spread in military rows across 300
acres of
sun-baked earth, Nevada Solar One's trough-shaped parabolic mirrors
are the
core of this CSP plant - also called a "solar thermal" plant. The
mirrors
focus sunlight onto receiver tubes, heating a fluid that, at 735
degrees F
flows through a heat exchanger to a steam generator that supplies
64 megawatts
of electricity to 14,000 Las Vegas homes.

http://blog.alternate-energy.net/entries/entry_65.php

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