Biomass Energy - One Of The Most Common Forms Of Energy


An incredible thing to know is that half of the population on Earth uses wood for heating their homes or for cooking. More extraordinary is the fact that about half of the energy in poor countries of Asia and almost all of the energy used in Africa comes from wood or biomass energy.
The reaction between plants, water and carbon dioxide is called "photosynthesis". During this process plants do an extraordinary thing. They take the energy that comes from the sun, and transform it into chemical energy. People use this energy that comes from plants and convert it into electricity, liquid fuels or heat. So, biomass uses as a source all kinds of organic matter. Wood chips, grass cutting, municipal solid waste, leaves, sewage, most things that we consider to be useless, are transformed into this kind of energy.

Scientists also developed several technologies of converting carbon and hydrogen found into these compounds to free biomass energy. Among these technologies we find direct combustion, gasification, alcohol fermentation or anaerobic digestion. The simplest way is the direct combustion. The burning of material and it's conversion into heat is very popular, and if you have the biomass source nearby, it can be very economical. Garbage also gives us energy. Manure, water waste or food waste are fed with water into a tank without air. The process is called anaerobic digestion, and it produces a mixture of methane and carbon dioxide. Another interesting process is the burning of biomass. The biomass is heated at a very high temperature, and in the absence of oxygen. The result is the creation of fuel oil, charcoal and gas. So you can see there are enough ways to produce biomass energy.

This kind of energy has large applications. People can use in their homes for heating or cooking, and even in large power plants, to produce high amounts of electricity. The ways of using this energy can be improved. Science people are working on different kinds of stoves, meant to improve the efficiency of heating or cooking, or to use less fuel.

And this is not the only advantage that the biomass energy produces. You should know that only in U.S. over 70,000 people work in the biomass energy production industry.

In the following 5 or 10 years, the benefits of this industry will triple, and the population will enjoy its benefits. A last thing that you should know about biomass energy is that it doesn't affect the environment as much as other types of energy. With some improvements on the conversion process, it will do no harm at all.