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Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Caleb Peterson
English 101
Mr. Jorgensen

In the world today we are using and exhausting our resources. How do we cut down on
this? We find better alternative ways to produce energy. One of the ways is through biomass.
Biomass is the use of dead organic matter. We can continually use biomass without the worry of
running out of product, hence the reason why it is called renewable resource.
Biomass is classified as a renewable energy source because new plants and trees can be
planted in the place of those that were harvested, whereas coal, oil, and natural gas reserves are
limited and will eventually be depleted. Electric utilities are required to incorporate prescribed
amounts or percentages of renewable electric generation in their supply mix.
Existing, well established technologies can be applied to substantially overcome
perceived impediments to building a robust biomass industry. These impediments include high
transportation cost, high moisture content, soluble salts in the biomass, and low energy density.
The goal then is to use technology to improve the biomass so that it can be used in a digestion,
gasification, or torrefaction process to produce solid fuels, biodiesel, and or ethanol. The use of
biomass as a substitute to coal will provide affordable ways to cut down on CO2, sulfur, and
mercury emissions.

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Wednesday, July 22, 2015

The combustion of biomass, or fuels derived from biomass, produces carbon dioxide.
However, this carbon dioxide is considered to be recycled since the plants or trees that yielded
biomass had only recently absorbed the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In contrast, carbon
dioxide produced by the combustion of fossil fuels is accounted for as incremental or new carbon
since it was absorbed and subsequently sequestered a million years ago.
The conventional wisdom regarding the general utilization of biomass as a feed stock for
energy production hasnt materially changed in centuries, despite the advancement of science
and technologies. For example, recent advancements in cellulosic ethanol technologies that
partially overcome the conventional wisdom by substantially reducing the cost of, and
competition for, feed stock, and also shift the energy balance from net negative to net positive,
are dwarfed by the high cost of gathering and transportation. The fact is that raw biomass,
regardless its source, has unacceptably low bulk of energy densities.
The conventional wisdom that discourages the wide spread use of biomass as a solid fuel
that can supplant coal, is seemingly insurmountable except for a certain niche applications like
burning woodchips and sawdust proximate to a lumber mill or in a sugar refinerys boilers.
Conventional beliefs about biomass co-firing with coal. Its too difficult and expensive to
transport because its inherent high moisture content. Wood chips and sawdust are the only
practical biomass materials for co-firing with coal. It has too low of heat content to be a practical
fuel. Large amounts of heat is used to dry the biomass.
How we have overcome these conventional beliefs. Substantially lower biomass moisture
content through a combination of chemical and mechanical processes rather through thermal
processes. Remove moisture near the source and recycle it for irrigation to reduce gathering

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and transportation costs. Mechanically remove the salts and minerals inherent in the biomass
material to eliminate the potential impact on power plant furnaces. Use underutilized crop land
for production of energy crops that do not compete with food production.
Applying proven technologies to the biomass. Chemically preparing biomass for
mechanical moisture extraction is necessary because, fiber destruction is key to achieving
optimal performance. It is also essential to find inexpensive and environmentally safe chemicals
to use when chemically preparing the biomass.
The fact is that the conventional wisdom regarding biomass is (or was) well-founded.
Raw biomass typically contains at least 40% moisture. Green cut wood can contain as much as
65% moisture. The effective heat content of a pound of raw biomass is 40% to 60% less than
pound of most coals
Centuries of data support the conventional wisdom that burning biomass in a
conventional furnace substantially increases fouling and slagging to the point where plant
operators are reluctant to co-fire more than 10% biomass. Because of its especially high volatile
content, blending biomass with coal at the coal pile of a coal plant may be undesirable from
the operators perspective. A plant modification to introduce biomass in to a coal plants furnace
after the coal has been pulverized is feasible, but potentially costly. Under todays regulations,
such as a modification would certainly trigger a new source review, something that plant owners
would certainly prefer to avoid. A quick review of public coal plant data accumulated by Energy
Information Administration (EIA) indicates that approximately 80% of operating coal units in the
U.S employs pulverizing coal technology.

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Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Conventional farming methods do not typically include the gathering of agricultural
residues based, in part, on the long- held belief that decaying agricultural residue left in the field
benefits the soil and contributes to successful future crop yields. There is sound science that
supports the notion that only about 35% of the agricultural residue is necessary to maintain soil
quality. In fact, there are compelling arguments that tilling decaying biomass into the soil is
actually detrimental to the soil.
The incremental fuel and capital costs of gathering agricultural residues must be
considered, in addition to the requisite financial incentives to the farmer, in the purchase price of
the biomass. There are widely varying opinions relevant to the price that would need to be paid
to the farmers to provide sufficient incentives for gathering and delivering agricultural residues.
The availability of biomass is inextricably tied to the growing season. Agricultural
residues, of course, are only available during and immediately after the harvest. Some energy
crops can be harvested more than once per season, but typically the annual yield per acre
declines. The varying month-to-month availability of biomass supplies requires some
combustion of coordination and potentially significant storage to accommodate what would be
relatively consistent demand for biomass should a coal plant implement a biomass co-firing
program.
The use of biomass in power plants is tremendously beneficial. Not only does it reduce
the harmful emissions that normal coal burning power plants gives off, it is also a renewable
energy source. When we produce lumber we have no use of the excess that we get from the trees.
The excess includes bark, branches, leafs, and roots. What do we do with this excess we either
burn it, or we pile it up some ware and forget about it. When we use biomass we use all of the

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excess of trees that no one wants or could use. Biomass could solve many problems for lumber
yards and even our national forests.
On average, the biomass power industry removes 68.8 million tons of forest waste
annually. This improves the overall health of the, or any forest reducing the threat of forest fires.
This forest waste is all of the dead organic matter that is left to rot on the forest floor. Any
national forest is taken and maintained be the forest maintenance crew. How they get rid of this
debris is they do what is called open burns, but we all know it by controlled fires. Controlled
fires can and usually do get out of hand. Doing these controlled burns we are spending well over
100 million dollars per year and its only getting worst. If we were to hire biomass companies to
come clear out the forests not only would that be benefiting for our forests but as well as for our
economy.
If we were to let biomass companies come in and clear out the forests, it would create
jobs, make the forests look better, cut down on the risk of a controlled fire breaking out, save
time and money, be eco-friendly, and it would not put any one in danger of losing a life.
Also relating to helping the economy, it would give the United States marketing
opportunities. The combination of aggressive renewable portfolio standards, ever increasing
emissions limitations, and billions of tons of agriculture and forestry residues left to decay in to
methane every year make the co-firing of coal and beneficiated biomass, especially in
uncontrolled coal plants, an incredibly practical and economically superior alternative to other
forms of renewable energy.
For example, millions of tons of intrusive trees such as the eastern red cedar can be
harvested in the Midwest, beneficiated, and back hauled in otherwise empty railcars to the coal

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mines in the Powder River Basin, where it will be blended with waste coal and briquetted. The
biomass/coal briquettes could then be shipped by rail to old pulverized coal plants in the
northeast where they would be burned as an alternative to coal alone. The relatively high cost of
beneficiating and briquetting would offset by the very low cost of the waste coal and backhaul
transportation. As briefly discussed above, the profit margin for this blended coal and biomass
product could easily exceed 60$ per ton.
Indonesia is the second largest exporter of coal in the world. Indonesian coal compares
very favorably to Indian coal, and so a substantial amount of Indonesian coal is delivered to
India every year where it is used to fuel coastal coal-fired power plants. Similarly, china also
imports large amounts of low sulfur Indonesian coal. India and especially china are major
contributors to annual carbon emissions. Both countries would be willing to pay a huge premium
for a biomass coal product that would serve to cut their carbon footprint in half while not
hampering their electricity production.
Biomass is an inexhaustible recourse that we can use as a cleaner alternative to burning
coal. For every tree that is used we can plant another one, for every forest that is cleaned without
resorting to controlled burnings it saves us money and is safer. The emissions that are given off
were absorbed when the tree was growing and is just recycled back in to the atmosphere without
a big harmful effect as coal would have. Biomass is more efficient and has more benefits to it
than coal. Biomass can and will change the world for the better. Our future is up to us so lets
make it a brighter and a cleaner future not only for us, but also for our kids and the next
generations that are to follow.

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Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Work cited page

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/biomass-energy-pros-and-cons.html
http://energyinformative.org/biomass-energy-pros-and-cons/
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/06/shirley-fire-budget-climatechange
http://renewableenergydev.com/biomass-energy-pros-and-cons/

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Demirbas, A. Sustainable co firing of biomass with coal. Energy Convers. Manag. 2003, 44,
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Jenkins, B.; Baxter, L.; Miles, T. Combustion properties of biomass. Fuel Proc. Technol. 1998,
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Jones, J.G.; Loeffler, D.; Calkin, D.; Chung, W. Forest residues for thermal energy compared
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Phil Scalzo, Chief Technical Officer, Biomass Energy Enhancements, LLC Salt Lake City Utah

Turnbull, J. Use of Biomass in electric power generation: The California experience. Biomass
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Bioproducts Industry; Perlack, R.D., Stokes. B.J., Ends.; ORNL/TM-2011/244; Oak Ridge
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