Choose Renewable Sources, Advantages of Biomass for Power Generation

When considering alternative energy strategies, the advantages of biomass are notable and one significant one is that burning the fuel does not contribute to the carbon cycle like fossil fuels in an unsustainable way. With an inexorable rise in levels of carbon dioxide, the major greenhouse gas, there is an urgent need to tackle the sources if the earth 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 increasing pressure on landfill sites to absorb municipal waste streams, the use of this source as biomass will see a gradual tailing off of waste heading to these sites, where significant releases of methane, a greenhouse gas over twenty times more potent than carbon dioxide, occurs.

Among the advantages of biomass is the ability to use it in a way that has less intense environmental impact than when there is combustion. This means that instead of burning the biomass, a process which then has to be balanced by sufficient planting of trees to act as a carbon dioxide sink, the process of anaerobic digestion is used to convert the waste into gases which can be used to drive turbines.

The use of ethanol derived from biomass in the various new biofuel mixes increases the efficiency of combustion as well as being cleaner burning than the traditional longer chain carbon fossil fuels. So we see that biomass has applications both in power generation as well as an alternative transport fuel to petroleum and its distillates.

It seems governments across the world see the growth of new renewable energy plants as one way to address the twin challenges of energy security and climate change. A key consideration, however, is the need for a sufficient and steady level of baseload supply, as it is not enough to just provide extra capacity to meet peak demands. Sometimes the wind doesn't blow and the sun does not always shine, and the tides have to turn, all are periods when no electricity can be produced, while the advantages of biomass sources is that they do not have this constraint.

The author, David Phillips, comes from the beautiful island of Anglesey off North Wales, UK and runs a helpful online resource covering local news and information. When considering the exciting growth potential of biomass Anglesey has a very interesting story to tell.