Biomass offers other significant environmental and consumer benefits, including improving forest health, protecting air quality, and offering the most dependable renewable energy source. You can read about how we turn biomass and other residuals into energy here. Careers Contact Us.
Renewable Energy. What is Biomass? Some examples of materials that make up biomass fuels are: scrap lumber; forest debris; certain crops; manure; and some types of waste residues.
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. What is biomass power? Due to emerging competitors from the rapidly growing countries such as India and China and the global economic downturn triggered by the Lehman shock, many companies in the process industries are struggling to survive the severe global competition.
How much do you know about pressure transmitters? Are you accurately, quickly and reliably measuring pressure? Ultimately, the drive of any good pressure transmitter is to get an accurate, reliable pressure measurement to the data user quickly. This video gives you the answers to your basic questions about pressure and pressure transmitters.
Overview Challenges Details Resources Videos. Request Consultation. Industry Brochure. References eBook. Customer Challenge Improving power plant efficiency Solution Yokogawa helps power plants operate more efficiently by improving the control of fuel, steam, and feed water. Enabling Technologies. Exapilot Operation Efficiency Improvement Package Exapilot is an online navigation tool that guides operators step by step through plant operating procedures.
Customer Challenge Safely and efficiently starting up boilers, a complicated process that requires considerable skill Solution Yokogawa systems make startups safer and more efficient by automating processes such as heating with fuel oil and switching over to biomass fuel. Biomass Power Generation Process Biomass plants typically are of the direct combustion, mixed combustion, or gasification type. Biopower Co. Veolia Energy Hungary Co. Operator errors and interventions were eliminated in all critical processes.
Application Note. White Paper. Overview: The automation suppliers that will be successful in the long term will be those that effectively address application or industry specific problems for end users with a value proposition that cannot be ignored.
Overview: In ARC's view, customers need a compelling business value proposition to justify investment in any kind of automation. Overview: This white paper provides an overview of how Yokogawa believes its customers can best prepare for and position themselves to benefit from IIoT-enabled technology and solutions and digitalization in general to emerge as the successful connected industrial enterprises of the future.
Yokogawa Unveils VigilantPlant. Overview: Yokogawa has come a long way in making its message clear to the world of process automation. Overview: Process automation end users are under more pressure than ever to do more with less. Yokogawa VigilantPlant Services Revisited. Overview: In today's dynamic industrial marketplace, the only constant is change.
Yokogawa Technical Report. Overview: Recently, manufacturing industries are trying to slash the total cost of ownership TCO. The most common biomass materials used for energy are plants, wood, and waste. These are called biomass feedstock s. Biomass energy can also be a non-renewable energy source. The energy from these organisms can be transformed into usable energy through direct and indirect means.
Biomass can be burned to create heat direct , converted into electricity direct , or processed into biofuel indirect. Thermal Conversion Biomass can be burned by thermal conversion and used for energy.
Thermal conversion involves heating the biomass feedstock in order to burn, dehydrate , or stabilize it. The most familiar biomass feedstocks for thermal conversion are raw material s such as municipal solid waste MSW and scraps from paper or lumber mills.
Different types of energy are created through direct firing, co-firing, pyrolysis, gasification, and anaerobic decomposition. Before biomass can be burned, however, it must be dried. This chemical process is called torrefaction. The biomass dries out so completely that it loses the ability to absorb moisture, or rot.
The lost energy and mass can be used to fuel the torrefaction process. During torrefaction, biomass becomes a dry, blackened material. It is then compressed into briquette s. Biomass briquettes are very hydrophobic , meaning they repel water. This makes it possible to store them in moist areas. The briquettes have high energy density and are easy to burn during direct or co-firing.
Direct Firing and Co-Firing Most briquettes are burned directly. The steam produced during the firing process powers a turbine , which turns a generator and produces electricity. This electricity can be used for manufacturing or to heat buildings. Biomass can also be co-fired, or burned with a fossil fuel. Biomass is most often co-fired in coal plants. Co-firing eliminates the need for new factories for processing biomass.
Co-firing also eases the demand for coal. This reduces the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas es released by burning fossil fuels. Pyrolysis Pyrolysis is a related method of heating biomass. This keeps it from combusting and causes the biomass to be chemically altered. Pyrolysis produces a dark liquid called pyrolysis oil, a synthetic gas called syngas, and a solid residue called biochar. All of these components can be used for energy. Pyrolysis oil , sometimes called bio-oil or biocrude, is a type of tar.
It can be combusted to generate electricity and is also used as a component in other fuels and plastics. Scientists and engineers are studying pyrolysis oil as a possible alternative to petroleum. Syngas can be converted into fuel such as synthetic natural gas. It can also be converted into methane and used as a replacement for natural gas.
Biochar is a type of charcoal. Biochar is a carbon-rich solid that is particularly useful in agriculture. Biochar enriches soil and prevents it from leach ing pesticide s and other nutrients into runoff. Biochar is also an excellent carbon sink. Carbon sink s are reservoirs for carbon-containing chemicals, including greenhouse gases. Gasification Biomass can also be directly converted to energy through gasification.
The molecules break down, and produce syngas and slag. Syngas is a combination of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. During gasification, syngas is cleaned of sulfur, particulates, mercury, and other pollutants.
The clean syngas can be combusted for heat or electricity, or processed into transportation biofuels, chemicals, and fertilizer s. Slag forms as a glassy, molten liquid. It can be used to make shingles, cement, or asphalt. Industrial gasification plants are being built all over the world. Asia and Australia are constructing and operating the most plants, although one of the largest gasification plants in the world is currently under construction in Stockton-on-Tees, England.
This plant will eventually be able to convert more than , tons of MSW into enough energy to power 50, homes. Anaerobic Decomposition Anaerobic decomposition is the process where microorganisms, usually bacteria , break down material in the absense of oxygen. Anaerobic decomposition is an important process in landfill s, where biomass is crushed and compressed, creating an anaerobic or oxygen-poor environment. In an anaerobic environment, biomass decay s and produces methane, which is a valuable energy source.
In a direct combustion system, biomass is burned in a combustor or furnace to generate hot gas, which is fed into a boiler to generate steam, which is expanded through a steam turbine or steam engine to produce mechanical or electrical energy. In a direct combustion system, processed biomass is the boiler fuel that produces steam to operate a steam turbine and generator to make electricity. There are numerous companies, primarily in Europe, that sell small-scale engines and combined heat and power systems that can run on biogas, natural gas, or propane.
Some of these systems are available in the United States, with outputs from about 2 kilowatts kW , and approximately 20, British thermal units Btu per hour of heat, to several megawatts MW. In the United States, direct combustion is the most common method of producing heat from biomass. The two principal types of chip-fired direct combustion systems are stationary- and traveling-grate combustors, otherwise known as fixed-bed stokers and atmospheric fluidized-bed combustors.
There are various configurations of fixed-bed systems, but the common characteristic is that fuel is delivered in some manner onto a grate where it reacts with oxygen in the air. This is an exothermic reaction that produces very hot gases and generates steam in the heat exchanger section of the boiler. In either a circulating fluidized-bed or bubbling fluidized-bed system, the biomass is burned in a hot bed of suspended, incombustible particles, such as sand.
Compared to grate combustors, fluidized-bed systems generally produce more complete carbon conversion, resulting in reduced emissions and improved system efficiency. In addition, fluidized-bed boilers can use a wider range of feedstocks.
Furthermore, fluidized-bed systems have a higher parasitic electric load than fixed-bed systems due to increased fan power requirements. Although less common, biomass gasification systems are similar to combustion systems, except that the quantity of air is limited, and thus produce a clean fuel gas with a usable heating value in contrast to combustion, in which the off gas does not have a usable heating value.
Clean fuel gas provides the ability to power many different kinds of gas-based prime movers, such as internal combustion engines, Stirling engines, thermo electric generators, solid oxide fuel cells, and micro-turbines. The efficiency of a direct combustion or biomass gasification system is influenced by a number of factors, including biomass moisture content, combustion air distribution and amounts excess air , operating temperature and pressure, and flue gas exhaust temperature.
The type of system best suited to a particular application depends on many factors, including availability and cost of each type of biomass e. Projects that can make use of both electricity production and thermal energy from biomass energy systems are often the most cost effective.
If a location has predictable access to year-round, affordable biomass resources, then some combination of biomass heat and electricity production may be a good option. Transportation of fuel accounts for a significant amount of its cost, so resources should ideally be available from local sources. In addition, a facility will typically need to store biomass feedstocks on-site, so site access and storage are factors to consider. As with any on-site electricity technology, the electricity generating system will need to be interconnected to the utility grid.
The rules for interconnection may be different if the system is a combined heat and power system instead of only for electricity production. The ability to take advantage of net metering may also be crucial to system economics.
The major capital cost items for a biomass power system include the fuel storage and fuel handling equipment, the combustor, boiler, prime mover e.
System cost intensity tends to decrease as the system size increases. Large systems require significant amounts of material, which leads to increasing haul distances and material costs. Therefore, determining the optimal system size for a particular application is an iterative process. A variety of incentives exist for biomass power, but vary with Federal and state legislation policies.
The timing of incentive programs often allows less construction time than needed for biomass projects. Also, Federal agencies often cannot take direct advantage of financial incentives for renewable energy unless they use a different ownership structure. Of interest, the State of Massachusetts recently removed biomass-fired electricity from its Renewable Portfolio Standard, because state officials did not believe that biomass provided a clear reduction in greenhouse gases.
As such, biomass projects no longer qualify for renewable energy certificates that count toward Massachusetts renewable energy goals or funding. The most important factors in planning for a biomass energy system are resource assessment, planning, and procurement.
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