Cool Facts about Biomass Energy

In my physics class, I was assigned to do a presentation about biomass energy. When I first heard the subject I was like “noooo biomass is so boring”, but as I researched further I found some cool and some not so cool facts about biomass.

Quick summary on what biomass is; it’s an organic material meaning that it comes from plants and animals and is used to produce electricity or heat. Some examples of biomass are wood, straw, and litter. If you want to learn more about biomass, let me know I’ll do another post on it :)

Just some examples of what biomass is made out of.

Cool facts

• Biomass can be considered renewable OR non-renewable depending on the person's definition of renewable and non-renewable. Some people define renewable as never run out in the foreseeable future, which would make biomass renewable. I personally consider biomass as non-renewable because once you use/burn it, you can't use that same piece (if you would say) of biomass again, you have to use a different piece. I find this really cool, I can’t think of any other energy source (that I know of) that can interpreted as both renewable and non-renewable.
• Biomass is a great substitute for gasoline, it's made out of sugar cane, which makes a fuel called ethanol, brazil uses ethanol and is probably the only country to have cars running if gasoline just happened to disappear.
• Biomass is also a great substitute for fossil fuel and a lot of countries such as Ethiopia and DR Congo have started to used biomass as their primary energy source instead of fossil fuels

Not so cool facts

• Even though I said that biomass is a good substitute for fossil fuels, carbon dioxide still goes into the earth, not as much as fossil fuels, but it does go into the earth :(

Maybe this picture can give you an idea about whether biomass is renewable or non-renewable

• It’s non-renewable. Like I said in my previous point it can be both ways depending on the person's opinion.

I learned a lot more but this would be a very boring read for you if I wrote all of it. To be honest, I think this type of energy source can change the world if we use it correctly, and we don’t use it too much, we can stop a lot of air pollution. Yes, carbon dioxide is still going into the earth but we have other energy sources to use as a backup. I really hope that fossil fuel factories switch to this energy, it will make a huge difference :)

A quick video about biomass if you don’t understand :)