Dry Biomass

As America continues to import oil and pay money to nations that don’t wish us well, more and more people are looking for energy alternatives.  Maybe it’s wind, or solar, or nuclear.  Maybe it’s all of them. But one of the most promising solutions is found not in the sky or in the sun, but right here on the ground.

It’s called biomass.  And it is already changing the way this country does its energy business.

Ever since the beginning of time, people have burned wood in their campfires for heat.  This is essentially what biomass is and what biomass does.  In some ways, that makes biomass the oldest form of energy in the world.  In pursuing more biomass, you might say we are going back to the future.

Here is the basic concept.  As plants and trees evolve, the process of photosynthesis kicks in.  This process take the energy from the sun and converts carbon dioxide into carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are important because they are the organic compounds that constitute biomass. As plants inevitably die, the energy in the carbohydrates is released.

But here is the key factor in all of this: biomass is renewable.  Fossil fuels will be completely depleted at some point.  And once they are depleted, they are not ever coming back.

But biomass has been here since creation and will be here until the world ends.  All it takes to make biomass renewable is to simply grow more plants and trees. And, as an extra benefit, biomass is an incredibly clean energy source that does not create additional carbon dioxide emissions.

Biomass is biological material derived from living, or recently living organisms. In the context of biomass for energy this is often used to mean plant based material, but biomass can equally apply to both animal and vegetable derived material.

Here are the four basic categories or types of biomass material:

• Virgin wood, from forestry, arboricultural activities or from wood processing or timber industry
• Energy crops: high yield crops grown specifically for energy applications (energy cane, switch grass)
• Agricultural residues: residues from agriculture harvesting or processing (cotton gin trash, corn stalks, cobs and husk)
• Food waste, from food and drink manufacture, preparation and processing, and post-consumer waste