Bra Yiit

Erge Sezgin Erdier

Sude zelik

WHAT IS BIOMASS ?
Biomass

is biological material derived from living, or recently living

organisms.A renewable and sustainable source of energy used to
create electricity or other forms of power. This is often used to
mean plant based material, but biomass can equally apply to both
animal and vegetable derived material.

 Biomass

is a renewable source of fuel to produce energy because:

waste

residues will always exist in terms of scrap wood, mill

residuals and forest resources; and

properly

managed forests will always have more trees, and we will

always have crops and the residual biological matter from those
crops.

 As

an energy source, biomass can either be used directly via

combustion to produce heat, or indirectly after converting it to
various forms of biofuel. Conversion of biomass to biofuel can be
achieved by different methods which are broadly classified
into:thermal,chemical, and biochemicalmethods.

CHEMICAL COMPOSITION OF
BIOMASS
Biomass

is carbon based and is

composed of a mixture of organic
molecules containing hydrogen,
usually including atoms of oxygen,
often nitrogen and also small
quantities of other atoms, including
alkali, alkaline earth and heavy
metals. These metals are often found
in functional molecules such as the
porphyrins which include chlorophyll
which contains magnesium.

BIOMASS SOURCES
There

are five basic categories of material ;

Virgin

wood : from forestry, arboricultural activities or from wood

processing

Energy

crops: high yield crops grown specifically for energy

applications

Agricultural

processing

residues: residues from agriculture harvesting or

Food

waste : from food and drink manufacture, preparation and

processing, and post-consumer waste

Industrial

waste and co-products :from manufacturing and

industrial processes.

PLANT MATERIAL
The

carbon used to construct biomass is absorbed from the atmosphere

as carbon dioxide (CO2) by plant life, using energy from the sun.

Plants

may subsequently be eaten by animals and thus converted into

animal biomass. However the primary absorption is performed by plants.

If

plant material is not eaten it is generally either broken down by microorganisms or burned:

If

broken down it releases the carbon back to the atmosphere, mainly as

either carbon dioxide (CO2) or methane (CH4), depending upon the
conditions and processes involved.

If

burned the carbon is returned to the atmosphere as CO 2.

These

processes have happened for as long as there have been plants

on Earth and is part of what is known as the carbon cycle.

BIOMASS AND CARBON CYCLE

Thecarbon

cycleis thebiogeochemical
cycleby whichcarbonis exchanged
among
thebiosphere,pedosphere,geosphere,h
ydrosphere, andatmosphereof the
Earth

When

biomass is burnt carbon is

released into the atmosphere as carbon
dioxide. If biomass is managed on a
sustainable basis it is harvested as part
of a constantly replenished crop. This
maintains a closed carbon cycle with no
net increase in atmospheric carbon
dioxide levels.

A simple diagram that explains the carbon

cycle

Biomass Power
In order to analyse the use of biomass for power generation, it is
important to consider three critical components of the process:
Biomass feedstocks: These come in a variety of forms and have different
properties that impact their use for power generation.
Biomass conversion: This is the process by which biomass feedstocks are
transformed into the energy form that will be used to generate heat and/or
electricity.
Power generation technologies: There is a wide range of commercially proven
power generation technologies available that can use biomass as a fuel
input.

 The

source and sustainability of the biomass feedstock is critical to

a biomass power generation projects economics and success.
There are a wide range of biomass feedstocks and these can be
split into whether they are urban or rural.

A critical issue for the biomass feedstock is its energy, ash and moisture
content, and homogeneity. These will have an impact on the cost of biomass
feedstock per unit of energy, transportation, pre-treatment and storage costs,
as well as the appropriateness of different conversion technologies.

Bioenergy can be converted into power through thermal-chemical

processes (i.e. combustion, gasification and pyrolysis) or bio-chemical
processes like anaerobic digestion.

BIOMASS COMBUSTION
TECHNOLOGIES
There
1)
2)

are two main components of a combustion based biomass plant:

the biomass-fired boiler that produces steam; and

the steam turbine, which is then used to generate electricity

Boilers types: The steam produced in the boilers is injected into steam turbines.
These convert the heat contained in the steam into mechanical power, which drives
the generation of electricity. There are three major types of turbines with each one
having its own specific characteristics.

Combined heat and power: The co-firing of biomass with coal in large coal-fired power
plants is becoming increasingly common. The advantage of biomass co-firing is that,
on average, electric efficiency in co-firing plants is higher than in dedicated biomass
combustion plants. The incremental investment costs are relatively low although they
can increase the cost of a coal-fired power plant by as much as a third.

 There

are three possible technology set-ups for cofiring:

Direct co-firing, whereby biomass and coal are fed into a boiler
with shared or separate burners;
Indirect co-firing, whereby solid biomass is converted into a fuel
gas that is burned together with the coal; and
Parallel co-firing, whereby biomass is burned in a separate boiler
and steam is supplied to the coal-fired power plant.

ANAEROBIC DIGESTION
Anaerobic

digestion is a naturally occurring process and can be

harnessed to provide a very effective means to treat organic
materials, including energy crops (although this is often at the R&D
stage, depending on the crop), residues and wastes from many
industrial and agricultural processes and municipal waste streams.

BIOMASS GASIFICATION
TECHNOLOGIES
Gasifier

technologies offer the possibility of converting biomass into a

producer gas, which can be burned in simple or combined-cycle gas
turbines at higher efficiencies than the combustion of biomass to
drive a steam turbine.

The

gasification process is a predominantly endothermic process that

requires significant amounts of heat. The producer gas, once
produced, will contain a number of contaminants, some of which are
undesirable, depending on the power generation technology used.
Some producer gas cleanup will therefore usually be required. After
cleaning, the producer gas can be used as a replacement for natural
gas and injected in gas turbines or it can produce liquid biofuels, such
as synthetic diesel, ethanol, gasoline or other liquid hydrocarbons via
Fischer-Tropsch synthesis.

CONVERSION OF BIOMASS
There

are a number of technological options available to

make use of a wide variety of biomass types as a
renewable energy source. Conversion technologies may
release the energy directly, in the form of heat or
electricity, or may convert it to another form, such as liquid
biofuel or combustible biogas. While for some classes of
biomass resource there may be a number of usage options,
for others there may only one appropriate technology.

 Thermal

conversion

These are processes in which heat is the dominant mechanism to convert

the biomass into another chemical form. The basic alternatives are separated
principally by the extent to which the chemical reactions involved are
allowed to proceed:
Combustion
Gasification
Pyrolysis

There are a number of other less common, more experimental or proprietary

thermal processes that may offer benefits such as hydrothermal upgrading
(HTU) and hydroprocessing. Some have been developed for use on high
moisture content biomass, including aqueous slurries, and allow them to be
converted into more convenient forms.

 Chemical

conversion

A range of chemical processes may be used to convert biomass into other forms,
such as to produce a fuel that is more conveniently used, transported or stored, or
to exploit some property of the process itself.
Biochemical

conversion

As biomass is a natural material, many highly efficient biochemical processes

have developed in nature to break down the molecules of which biomass is
composed, and many of these biochemical conversion processes can be harnessed.
Biochemical conversion makes use of the enzymes of bacteria and other microorganisms to break down biomass. In most cases micro-organisms are used to
perform the conversion process:
Anaerobic

digestion

Fermentation
Composting

REFERENCES
http://www.reenergyholdings.com/renewable-energy/what-is-bioma

ss
/
http://www.biomassenergycentre.org.uk/portal/page?_pageid=76,

15049&_
dad=portal

http://www.drax.com/biomass/what-is-biomass/
http://biofuelsassociation.com.au/biofuels/biomass/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomass
https://www.irena.org/DocumentDownloads/Publications/RE_Techno

logies_Cost_Analysis-BIOMASS.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaerobic_digestion