BIOMASS
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OVERVIEW
•Biomass is a renewable energy source that is derived from living or
recently living organisms.
•Biomass includes biological material, not organic material like coal.
•Energy derived from biomass is mostly used to generate electricity or
to produce heat.
•Thermal energy is extracted by means of combustion, Torre faction,
pyrolysis, and gasification.
•Biomass can be chemically and biochemically treated to convert it to
a energy-rich fuel.
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SOLID BIOMASS

Solid Biomass Power Plant

LIQUID BIOFUELS

LIQUID BIOFUELS

GASEOUS BIOMASS

POTENTIAL ENERGY SOURCE?
• Bioenergy contributes more to primary global energy supply than
any other renewable energy source.
• Total energy demand supplied from biomass in 2015 was
approximately 60 exajoules (EJ).
• The use of biomass for energy has been growing at around 2%
per year since 2010.
• The bioenergy share in total global primary energy consumption
has remained relatively steady since 2005, at around 10%,
despite a 24% increase in overall global energy demand between
2005 and 2015.

POTENTIAL ENERGY SOURCE?
• The annual global primary production of biomass is equivalent to
the 4,500 EJ of solar energy captured each year.
• At present, a bioenergy supply of 270 EJ, possible on a
sustainable basis, can cover almost 50% of the world’s total
primary energy demand.
• Moreover, this amount of bioenergy can be achieved by only 6%
of the annual global primary production of biomass.

POTENTIAL ENERGY SOURCE?
• The potential for energy from biomass depends in part on land
availability.
• Currently, the amount of land devoted to growing energy crops
for biomass fuels is only 0.19% of the world’s total land area and
only 0.5-1.7% of global agricultural land.
• A mere 10% increase in the efficiency of biomass production
through irrigation, manuring, fertilizing and/or improved
management through the cultivation of idle land, would create
energy equivalent to the total current global energy demand
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POTENTIAL ENERGY SOURCE?
• However, if we compare an upper limit of the total global
bioenergy production potential in 2050 of 1,135 EJ, that
can come available as energy supply without affecting the
supply of food crops, with the highest scenarios on the
global primary energy demand in 2050 of 1,041 EJ, we
see that the world’s bioenergy potential is large enough to
meet global energy demand in 2050.
• Unfortunately, this information is not part of the public
consciousness.

CONTRIBUTION OF BIO-ENERGY
• Bioenergy plays a role in all three main energy-use
sectors: heat (and cooling), electricity and transport.
• The contribution of bioenergy to final energy demand for
heat (traditional and modern) far outweighs its use in
either electricity or transport.

*MSW: Municipal Solid Waste
*

• Biomass energy use in 2015 is estimated at 31 EJ.
• Consumption of fuelwood for traditional energy uses an
estimated 1.9 billion cubic metres (m3).
• The largest shares of fuelwood (as well as other fuels
such as dung and agricultural residues) are consumed in
Asia, South America and Africa.
• The use of charcoal for cooking in many developing
countries, especially in urban areas, has been increasing
by an average of around 3% a year since 2010, reaching
an estimated 55 million tonnes in 2015

GLOBAL BIO-POWER
• Bio-power capacity increased by an estimated 5% in 2015, to 106.4 GW, and
generation rose by 8% to 464 TWh.
• The rise in generation was due in part to increased use of existing capacity.
• The leading countries for electricity generation from biomass in 2015 were
– United States (69 TWh)
– Germany (50 TWh)
– China (48 TWh)
– Brazil (40 TWh)
– Japan (36 TWh)
– United Kingdom
– India

BIOMASS AND CARBON EMMISIONS

ADVANTAGES
• Renewable resource
• Dependency on Fossil Fuels is Reduced
• Carbon Neutral
• Widely Available
• Reduces landfills
• Protects clean water supplies
• Reduces acid rain and smog
• Reduces greenhouse gases
– Carbon dioxide
– Methane

DISADVANTAGES
• Not totally clean when burned
• Can lead to deforestation
• Biodiesel product are inefficient as compared to gasoline.
• Requires lot of space
• Expensive process

MAJOR BARRIERS
Major barriers faced in faster realization of available biomass power
potential for a variety of end use applications are:
• Inadequate information on biomass availability
• Absence of organized formal biomass markets
• Problems associated with management of biomass collection,
transportation, processing and storage; problems associated with
setting up large size biomass plants
• Non-availability of cost effective sub megawatt systems for
conversion of biomass to energy in a decentralized manner
• Lack of capability to generate bankable projects on account of
financial and liquidity problems, etc.

MAJOR CHALLENGES
The major challenges in ensuring sustained biomass supply
at reasonable prices are:
• Increasing competing usage of biomass resources, leading to
higher opportunity costs
• Unorganized nature of biomass market, which is characterized by
lack of mechanization in agriculture sector, defragmented land
holdings, and vast number of small or marginal farmers.
• The cost of biomass storage and transportation to power plants,
which is consistently rising rapidly with time.

SOLUTIONS
• There is the need to evolve a robust organized biomass
market through innovative business models, motivating
rural entrepreneurs to take up the responsibility of
supplying biomass to processing facilities.
• There is also the need to develop and exploit energy
plantations to take up energy crops on marginal and
degraded land, as a substitute for crop wastes.

Thank You
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