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Examples include wood, sawdust, grass cuttings, domestic refuse, charcoal, agricultural waste, non-food energy crops and dried manure. The current types of processes are pellet, cube, or puck. The pellet process is most common in Europe and is typically a pure wood product. The other types of densification are larger in size compared to a pellet and are compatible with a broad range of input feed stocks. The resulting densified fuel is easier to transport and feed into thermal generation systems such as boilers.
A problem with the combustion of raw biomass is that it emits considerable amounts of pollutants such as particulates and PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons). Even modern pellet boilers generate much more pollutants than oil or natural gas boilers. Pellets made from agricultural residues are usually worse than wood pellets, producing much larger emissions of dioxins and chlorophenols.
Scond generation biofuelsSupporters of biofuels claim that a more viable solution is to increase political and industrial support for, and rapidity of, second-generation biofuel implementation from non food crops. Second-generation biofuel production processes can use a variety of non food crops. Cellulosic ethanol production uses non food crops or inedible waste products and does not divert food away from the animal or human food chain. Lignocellulose is the "woody" structural material of plants. This feedstock is abundant and diverse, and in some cases (like citrus peels or sawdust) it is in itself a significant disposal problem. Scientists working in New Zealand have developed a technology to use industrial waste gases from steel mills as a feedstock for a microbial fermentation process to produce ethanol.
Third generation biofuelsAlgae fuel, also called oilgae or third generation biofuel, is a biofuel from algae. Algae are low-input, high-yield feedstocks to produce biofuels. Based on laboratory experiments, it claimed that Algae can produces up to 30 times more energy per acre than land crops such as soybeans, but these yields have yet to be produced commercially. With the higher prices of fossil fuels (petroleum), there is much interest in algaculture (farming algae).
One advantage of many biofuels over most other fuel types is that they are biodegradable, and so relatively harmless to the environment if spilled. Algae fuel still has its difficulties thought, for instance to produce algae fuels it must be mixed uniformly, which, if done by agitation, could affect biomass growth. The United States Department of Energy estimates that if algae fuel replaced all the petroleum fuel in the United States, it would require 15,000 square miles (38,849 square kilometers), which is roughly the size of Maryland.
ROME - Biofuels like ethanol can help reduce global warming and create jobs for the rural poor, but the benefits may be offset by serious environmental problems and increased food prices for the hungry.
In an agency-wide assessment, the United Nations raised alarms about the potential negative impact of biofuels, just days after a climate conference in Bangkok said the world had both the money and technology to prevent the sharp rise in global temperatures blamed in part on greenhouse gas emissions.
“Unless new policies are enacted to protect threatened lands, secure socially acceptable land use, and steer bioenergy development in a sustainable direction overall, the environmental and social damage could in some cases outweigh the benefits,” the report stated.
Biofuels, which are made from corn, palm oil, sugar cane and other agricultural products, have been seen by many as a cleaner and cheaper way to meet the world’s soaring energy needs than with greenhouse-gas emitting fossil fuels.
With oil prices at record highs, biofuels have become an attractive alternative energy source for poor countries, some of which spend six times as much money importing oil than on health care.
But environmentalists have warned that the biofuel craze can do as much or more damage to the environment as dirty fossil fuels — a concern reflected throughout the report, which was released Tuesday in New York by UN-Energy, a consortium of 20 U.N. agencies and programs. While saying bioenergy represents an “extraordinary opportunity” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it warned that “rapid growth in liquid biofuel production will make substantial demands on the world’s land and water resources at a time when demand for both food and forest products is also rising rapidly.”
Changes in the carbon content of soils and carbon stocks in forests and peat lands might offset some or all of the benefits of the greenhouse gas reductions, it said. “Use of large-scale monocropping could lead to significant biodiversity loss, soil erosion and nutrient leaching,” it said, adding that investments in bioenergy must be managed carefully, at national, regional and local levels to avoid new environmental and social problems “some of which could have irreversible consequences.”
It noted that soaring palm oil demand has already led to the clearing of tropical forests in southeast Asia. In addition, the diversion of food crops for fuel will increase food prices, putting a strain on the poor, as evidenced by the recent steep rise in maize and sugar prices, the report said. “Liquid biofuel production could threaten the availability of adequate food supplies by diverting land and other productive resources away from food crops,” it said, adding that many of those biofuel crops require the best land, lots of water and environment-damaging chemical fertilizers.
While bioenergy crops can create jobs in impoverished rural areas where the bulk of the world’s poor and hungry live, creating biofuels favors large-scale production, meaning small-scale farmers could be pushed off their land by industrial agriculture. It suggested that farm co-ops, as well as government subsidies, could help small-scale farmers compete.
Such concerns have been raised by Greenpeace International and other environmental groups worried that the biofuel fad is being driven by big agricultural interests looking for new markets.
“More and more, people are realizing that there are serious environmental and serious food security issues involved in biofuels,” Greenpeace biofuels expert Jan van Aken said. “There is more to the environment than climate change,” he said. “Climate change is the most pressing issue, but you cannot fight climate change by large deforestation in Indonesia.”
Mission: It is necessary to find alternative fuels before petroleum runs out, but we have to be careful in that the solution isn’t worse than the problem. We must look very carefully at biofuels and find away that they can be used without making the poor poorer and the environment sicker.
Questions: If you have any doubt let it know to
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