Planethopia

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 in the food chain on to the animals and people that eat them. Biomass is a renewable energy source because it is possible to grow more trees and crops. Some examples of biomass fuels are wood, crops, manure, and some garbage. When burned, the chemical energy in biomass is released as heat.

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. Rotting garbage, agricultural waste, and human waste, release methane gas—also called “landfill gas” or “biogas.” Crops like corn and sugarcane can be fermented to produce the transportation fuel ethanol. Biodiesel, another transportation fuel, can be produced from leftover food products like vegetable oils and animal fats.

The most common form of biomass is wood. For thousands of years, people have burned wood for heating and cooking. Wood was the main source of energy in the world until the mid 1800s. Another source of biomass is garbage – also called municipal solid waste (MSW). Trash that comes from plant or animal products is biomass. Food scraps, lawn clippings, and leaves are all examples of biomass trash. Materials that are made out of glass, plastic, and metals are not biomass because they are made out of nonrenewable materials. MSW can be a source of energy by either burning MSW in waste-to-energy plants or by capturing biogas. In waste-to-energy plants, trash is burned to produce steam that can be used either to heat buildings or to generate electricity. In landfills, biomass rots and releases methane gas, also called biogas, or landfill gas. Some landfills have a system that collects the methane gas so that it can be used as a fuel source.

Biofuels are transportation fuels like ethanol and biodiesel that are made from biomass materials. These fuels are usually blended with the petroleum fuels – gasoline and diesel, but they can also be used on their own. The advantage to combining ethanol or biodiesel with fossil fuel is that less fossil fuels are burned resulting in less of an impact on global warming. Ethanol and biodiesel are usually more expensive than the fossil fuels that they replace, but they are also cleaner burning fuels, producing fewer air pollutants. Ethanol is an alcohol fuel made from the sugars found in grains, such as corn, sorghum, and wheat, as well as potato skins, rice, sugar-cane, sugar beets, and yard clippings.

Biodiesel is a fuel made with vegetable oils, fats, or greases – such as recycled restaurant grease. These fuels can be used in diesel engines. Biodiesels are the fastest growing alternative fuel in the United States today. Being a renewable fuel, biodiesel is safe, biodegradable, and reduces the emissions of most air pollutants. Burning biomass fuels does not produce pollutants like sulfur, which can cause acid rain. When burned, biomass does release carbon dioxide—a greenhouse gas. But when bio-mass crops are grown, a nearly equivalent amount of carbon dioxide is captured through the process of photosynthesis.

Burning municipal solid waste (MSW or garbage) and wood waste to produce energy means that less of it has to be buried in landfills. Plants that burn waste to make electricity must use technology to prevent harmful gases and particles from coming out of their smokestacks. The particles that are filtered out are added to the ash that is removed from the bottom of the furnace. Because the ash may contain harmful chemicals and metals, it must be disposed of carefully. Sometimes the ash can be used for roadwork or building purposes.

Collecting and using landfill waste and biogas fuel also reduces the amount of methane that is released into the air. Methane is one of the greenhouse gases associated with global climate change. Many land-fills find it cheaper to just burn off the gas that they collect, however, because the gas needs to be processed before it can be put into natural gas pipelines.

Since the early 1990s, ethanol has been blended into gasoline to reduce harmful carbon monoxide emissions. Blending ethanol into gasoline also reduces toxic pollutants found in gasoline but causes more “evaporative emissions” to escape. In order to reduce evaporative emissions, the gasoline requires extra processing before it can be blended with ethanol. When burned, ethanol does release carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. But growing plants for ethanol may reduce greenhouse gases, since plants use carbon dioxide and produce oxygen as they grow – producing a counter-balance process.

Biodiesel is much less polluting that petroleum diesel. It has lower emissions of carbon dioxide, sulfur oxide, particulates, carbon monoxide, air toxins, and unburned hydrocarbons, although it does have slightly elevated emissions of nitrogen oxide.

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