BIO-ENERGY

Important terms and definitions

• Bioenergy is energy of biological origin, derived
from biomass, such as fuelwood, livestock
manure, municipal waste, energy crops
• Biofuels are fuels produced from biomass,
usually of agricultural origin
– Bioethanol
– Biodiesel
– Biogas
• Energy crops are crops specifically cultivated to
provide bioenergy, mainly biofuels (jatropa,
eucalyptus other oilseeds)
 What is Bioenergy?
• Bioenergy is:
“energy derived from recently living material
such as wood, crops, or animal waste.” (versus
decayed materials that comprise fossil fuels)

• Can be burned directly for heat or converted to

biofuels such as biodiesel or ethanol.
 What is Biomass?
• Biomass is any solid, nonhazardous, cellulosic
material derived from forests or related
resources, solid wood wastes, agricultural
wastes, and plants grown exclusively as a fuel.
 Biomass
• Biomass is the largest renewable energy source
in use today
There are two main forms of biomass:
• Primary or Raw biomass consists of
forestry products, grasses, crops, animal
manure,algae.
• Secondary biomass is material that comes from
raw biomass, but has undergone significant
changes. These would include items such as
paper, cardboard, cotton, natural rubber
products and used cooking oils.
 Photosynthesis Process
Biomass is produced in the photosynthesis process which converts the
solar energy into biomass energy.
Photosynthesis process only occurs in green plants combining CO2 from
the atmosphere with water and light energy to produce sugar, starch,
cellulose
and oxygen.

Photosynthesis
6CO2 + C6H12O6 + 6O2
6H2O + light energy
 How much biomass
exists right now?
• Worldwide, total "standing crop" biomass (99% on land, and 80% in trees)
is a huge resource, equivalent to about 60 years of world energy use in the
year 2000 (1250 billion metric tonnes of dry plant matter, containing 560
billion tonnes of carbon).
• However, the Earth actually grows every year about 130 billion tonnes
of biomass on land (60 billion tonnes of carbon) and a further 100
billion tonnes in the rivers, lakes and oceans (46 billion tonnes carbon).
• The energy content of this annual biomass production is estimated to be
more than 6 times world energy use or 2,640 exajoules on land, with an
additional 2024 exajoules in the waters.
 What are Biofuels?

• Renewable liquid and gaseous fuels from Biomass and not fossil
products
• Examples of biofuels are ethanol (from corn and
sugarcane), biodiesel (vegetable oils and liquid animal fats), green
diesel (from algae) and biogas (methane derived from animal
manure and organic material).
• Biofuels are most useful in liquid or gas form because they are
easier to transport, deliver and burn cleanly.
 Solid biofuels
• Wood
• Charcoal
• biomass pellets
 Liquid
Biofuels

• Bioethanol
 Fuel ethanol is a form of alcohol, fermented
and distilled from a wide range of plant life
such as wheat, corn or woody material
• Biodiesel
 produced by chemically upgrading oils
obtained from the pressing of oil plants,
 Gasbiofuels

• Biogas
• Bio synthetic natural gas
(bio-SNG) produced from
thermal and chemical
conversion of biomass
 Facts about bioenergy

• Worldwide, biomass is the fourth largest energy resource after coal, oil, and
natural gas - estimated at about 14% of global primary energy (and much
higher in many developing countries).
• Biomass is used for heating (such as wood stoves in homes and for process
heat in bioprocessing industries), cooking (especially in many parts of the
developing world), transportation (fuels such as ethanol) and, increasingly,
for electric power production.
• • Installed capacity of biomass power generation worldwide is about 35,000
MW
• Much of this 7,000 MW capacity is presently found in the pulp and paper
industry, in combined heat and power (cogeneration) systems
 CONCLUSION
•Biomass - potential alternative to fossil fuels but it is no
very viable.
•Biomass causes a closed cycle with no net emissions of
greenhouse gases like CO2 and CH4
•They are better alternative energies.
THANKS FOR YOUR ATTENTION
 Slow domain of the carbon cycle- turnover
times exceed 10,000 years.
Fast domain (the atmosphere, ocean,
vegetation and soil), vegetation and soil
carbon, turnover times1– 100 and 10– 500
years, respectively.

Fossil fuel transfers carbon from

the slow domain to the fast
domain, while bioenergy systems
operate within the fast domain.