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What is Biomass?

Human beings began the use of biomass for energy when our ancestors have learned about fire and how to use it particularly in cooking food.  Biomass is any natural thing that has been grown or has lived, excluding fossil fuels such as coal, oil, natural gas and many more.  Biomass can be in the form of wood, straw, biological wastes, waste paper, organic wastes from food processing, livestock farming and so many others.  Biomass can be utilized to produce energy.  These can be burned, agitated and absorbed to provide energy.  All of these contain solar energy which combined into their carbon chemistry while they were still living.  And that energy can be liberated for human beings’ use without adding up to the carbon dioxide burden (global warming problem) on our planet as long as we continuously plant, breed, and grow sources of biological mass or biomass.

Moreover, biomass can be grown as a crop for fuel use.   If it has to be grown, it needs to be able to grow fast with little watering or fertilizer requirement and it has to be of high calorific value.  However, it is not a wise idea to rely from these sources to produce biomass for fuel use because most lands are used for food productions. An increase in biomass production will mean decrease in food production. There has to be some other sources where we can obtain biological mass.   Biomass can come in the form of biological wastes.  Since the whole world produces so many wastes which we even finding it hard to properly dispose off, why not use it for fuel use to make it useful.

Nowadays, people are being trained to separate their wastes into biodegradable and non-biodegradable.  Biomass can be segregated at source by the public by disseminating information through several mediums such as advertisements in televisions, announcements in newspapers and the like.  Garbage collections have now a separate collection for biological wastes, including food wastes.  Food wastes have the highest heat produce when burnt or digested, and they comprise between 15% and 25% of all household (domestic) waste by weight.

Unlike using fossil fuels to produce energy, biomass is a much less harmful to mankind and to our precious earth. Even if biomass fuels are readily available, people all over the world are hesitant to use it especially that most of it came from the biological wastes of the whole world.  They feel that it is not safe for mankind and the earth. They may have adverse effects on our environment but if we will compare it with massive use of fossil fuels, the adverse effects of using biomass fuel are much less than that of using fossil fuels.