Biomass is Renewable Energy; there's lots of it around.

So what is Biomass? Good question… have you ever tossed a chunk of wood into a fireplace? Or burned Wood Pellets in one of those new fangled Pellet Stoves. Did you ever put Gasohol in your car’s gas tank? If you’ve done any of these, you’ve used a Biomass. You may have even unknowingly benefited from an organic fuel when you turned on the hall light.

Okay, so what is the stuff anyway?... Its any Organic Material we use as a source of energy - synthetic fuels. Incidentally, every last molecule of it contains energy from the sun. Actually, Biomass is the oldest source of energy known to man.

Obviously, it’s renewable, because we’ve used some kind of biopower to cook our food and heat our homes for thousands of years. Currently, it provides approximately 3% of the total energy used in the United States, and 47% of the renewable energy used.

How do we use it? We burn it, ferment it, convert it, chemically alter it, and let bacteria do their thing with it.

How many types are there? Basically five… our Garbage or MSW (Municipal Solid Waste); Landfill Biogas; Wood and Wood Waste; Agricultural based Crops and their Residue, and Alcohol and Biodiesel Fuels, but depending on how you look at it, biofuel sources are almost endless.

It’s actually versatile stuff: you can convert solids into gas or burn them, produce alcohol from a plant or make compost, heat our homes or make steam for electricity. The energy needed and resources available, determines the best use.

Farm generated materials may be a Crop, one of the two types of Crop Residue, like Corncobs or Plant Leaves and Roots, ordinary Weeds, even Lawn Clippings have biopower capability. The solids may be a variety of Woods and ordinary Garbage (MSW). Garbage dumped into a landfill from thousands of homes will almost certainly produce Methane Gas. Convert Wood, Crops, Weeds and their Residues into Alcohol.

In summery: just as the number of Biomass materials and substances are endless, so too are their uses. And because there’s so much of it, we need to manage it. Soooo, what exactly is it that we manage?

• Food Waste
• Kitchen Waste
• Garden Waste
• Crop Residue
• Animal Manure
• Sewerage
• Sewerage Sludge
• MSW
• Industrial Biowaste
• Construction Waste
• Wood
• Sawdust

• Gas for Cooking
• Gas for Heating
• Gas to Produce Steam for Electricity
• Ethanol
• Biodiesel
• Hydrogen
• Compost
• Charcoal

As fossil fuel prices climb higher, the outlook for bio-materials is bright. Biodiesel, one of the synthetics is a good example. Another is burning waste materials to generate Electricity. A home warmed with Wood Pellets is another. Many end uses exist, as does the variety of materials that produce them.

Whatever, whenever, or however the stuff starts out, be it fibrous, solid, or liquid, no matter its shape or size – we can either use it to produce synthetic fuels or bury it.

Okay, suppose we decide to bury it, let’s look at a typical landfill… where does it all comes from. The average 3 person household creates roughly 4900 pounds of garbage each year. Let’s break that down to one person.

That’s 4.5 lbs a day, 31.5 lbs and 1638 lbs a year. Of that, approximately 34% is some kind of paper, 12% is food leftovers, 13% is yard waste, and about 6% is wood. The rest, 35% is inorganic. This does not include commercial waste.

And there’s a down side - Methane Gas. It’s sad that most of it is simply wasted. One landfill may burn it off, while another simply allows it to vent into the atmosphere. Why? Because Biogas can’t compete with lower priced Natural Gas.

But it's like I said, Biomass is everywhere.

Biomass, cook with it, keep warm by it, drive by it!

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