Nash Reigle
Mrs. Kondrat
English 10 B
Due February 26th, 2014
Biomass
What would the world do if we ran out of our precous fossil fuels that we use in our everyday life? Biomass is the answer! Biomass is an organic material that can be used for fuel and as a substitute for oil. The difference between fossil fuels and biomass is the time taken to create both type of fuel. Biomass is easier to create than fossil fuels because of the time it takes fossil fuels to deteriorate into the materials and sit for millions of years until the finished product.
Biomass can be made from a variety of organic materials. Corn is a common source for fuel because of it’s high sugar content. Most biological waste can used for fuel. Lawn clippings and discarded tree branches can be ground up and used. Natural food waste can also be used. Wood and dense plant material can be made into charcoal. Things with high sugar content can be made into ethanol. Charcoal is already being used and isn’t used as much as it could due to coal being readily available. Alcohol is a form of “fuel” that has been made by humans for several thousand years and made naturally for millions of years. This is an example that when given the right ingredients and process along with people willing to find the right combination, it can be made quickly and easily (Biomass.net).
Coal has been used through time as a fuel and for heat. Coal is basically a piece of carbon that is over a million years old and has had extreme pressure forming it into a compressed version of itself, giving quite a bit of fuel for it’s size. A carbon atom’s half-life is 5,730 years. If you had a gram of solid carbon, 5,730 years later, there would be half a gram of carbon. Because carbon is a common el...
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...ron and tin (at 1,300 Celsius) that turns the required ingredients into a gas and the impurities into ash that can be discarded with the molten metal. A cobalt catalyst can be used to bond the carbon into the long carbon chains used in ethanol and oil. Metal chlorides can be added to the final product to attract leftover impurities. The chloride is magnetic and can be filtered with a simple magnet. Filtering impurities can simplify the cleaning of equipment and is more effective than impure ethanol. (MIT Tech Review)
Biomass can be used for fuel when fossil fuels are depleted or run out. Biomass takes less time to create due to fossil taking millions of years to create. Some processes for biomass are widely used while others are expensive and seemingly ineffective. New techniques are appearing often. Even tiny discoveries can lead to making the world a better place.
Coal is by far the most abundant of fossil fuels, and will be available for much longer than oil. Having been harvested and burned since the 13th century, a massive infrastructure has been formed to quickly and efficiently mine, deliver, and burn coal. Coal is also the cheapest of fossil fuels (The Futurist, 1997)
When we say ethanol production we are referring to the use of ethanol as a hybrid fuel for automobiles. What hybrid fuels means is that instead of running a car solely off of ethanol or gasoline alone, ethanol is actually blended in with standard fuel grade gasoline to create the ethanol fuel hybrid. Ethanol is derived from alcohol; it is a grain alcohol that is typically broken down from corn, although it can be obtained by other means such as Brazilian sugar cane, wheat, barley and potatoes (West). The way ethanol is created, according to Larry West in an article titled How is Ethanol made, is by fermenting plant sugars from photosynthesis, treating them with enzymes followed by then inserting tiny microbes to feed on the sugar that will finally b...
As stated earlier, the burning of fossil fuels to produce energy is one of the largest contributors to global warming. This non-environmentally friendly energy source has to be replaced in order to keep the world going. There is a type of energy source that seems easy to create and doesn’t require radical changes: Biofuels. Biofuels are a greener version of diesel and oil. They are any solid, liquid, or gas fuels produced from organic matter; the range of organic materials used for biofuel production includes plants such as corn, sugar cane, soy, and wheat; vegetable oils and animal fats; ...
Coal is considerably one of the most important sources of energy in nature and is one the most significant sources for power generation worldwide. The excavation and importance of coal became mainstream and apparent during the Industrial Revolution of the 19th and 20th centuries.
The fuels are Ethanol, Propanol, Propan-2-ol. Butanol and Butan-2-ol. Setting up the practicals. Because there are some restrictions on the time we are going to have to perform the experiment, we are first going to find out a set up. that would allow us to produce definite results quickly.
After the oil/gas mixture is drawn from the ground, it is then stored into a storage tank and allowed to rest for a while. Then the gas is piped off to a set of distillation columns to clean up the ethane. In order to activate the chemical reaction necessary to separate the ethane, a thermal cracking unit (a sort of long heated tube) i.e. a plug flow reactor is used. After a series of distillations, ethylene exits the tube.
Discuss where and how the fuel is obtained or made and the chemical processes involved (plus the energy inputs these processes require) - 19 marks
Coal is one of the world’s most abundant fossil fuels. Coal was formed during the Carboniferous Period when dead plant material was buried and subjected to high pressure and heat. Coal is classified by moisture content and composition. There are four d...
...dition, fossil fuels not only unleash carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, but also is harmful to human when exposed for a long period of time, new energy resources would be needed to replace it such as, wind turbans, biomass energy, wind energy, solar energy, geothermal energy, and hydroelectric energy (Alternative Energy).
...ch is used to replace natural gas. He also stated that, among the equipment used to burn the biofuel, the suspension burner have the ability to exceed 99% efficiency and whole-tree burner can reduce the cost of harvesting and handling woody fuels by about 35% (Brown, 2003). Moreover, the usage of bio-energy in long term is to provide a degree of ecological balance and climate change, avoid acid rain, reduce soil erosion and minimize water pollution (Gevorkian, 2007). Therefore, biomass is environmental friendly like solar energy. Based on the research that has been carried out regarding the synthesis of gas from biomass, the gas gasifies in the internal combustion engine. The relative energy density of synthesis gas is higher than the fossil fuel under certain conditions. In addition, the relative flame speed of synthesis gas can reduce the time for spark ignition.
biomass to gasified coal and Hydrogel, Natural gas and Synthetic gas . As the technology develops, and if the cost of fossil fuels continues to rise, this clean, efficient alternative will stimulate the thermo mechanical
When coal gets burned they start to release harmful dangerous toxins such as mercury, lead and arsenic that will then escape into the air. It also releases large amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere. These emissions increase the greenhouse effect in the atmosphere and lead to global warming.
The alternative to food based bio-fuels, is algae based bio-fuels. Being first explored as a fuel alternative in 1978, the Aquatic Species Program by National Renewable Energy Laboratory researched the high oil output of algae. The researchers tested more than 3000 different types of algae and found that if produced in massive quantities, it could replace fossil fuels for heating homes and transportation purposes. To understand more about why the researchers chose algae for an alternate fuel source lets learn more about.
Biomass gasification is a process by which biofuel is produced. It has been used for over 180 years but in the last decades it has been reconsidered as an interesting technique due to the fact that oil supplies are decreasing. As mentioned before, gasification is a thermal process. Heat is added up in order to convert the organic mass to biofuel. The biomass usually undergoes drying, pyrolysis, partial oxidation and reduction. Nowadays the configurations used for gasification are three: fixed bed gasifier, fluidized bed gasifier and entrained bed gasifiers. The simplest configuration is the
There are three types of fossil fuels- coal, crude oil, and natural gas. Coal was formed very slowly. Even the “newest” coal we use today was formed a million years ago. Most of the coal we use was formed 300 million years ago, when the Earth was covered with swamps. When plants and trees died, they sank to the bottoms of the swamps. These plants and trees were layered on top of each other, forming a substance called peat. Peat is considered the first stage in coal formation. It is a mixture of water, leaves, braches, and other plant debris. Over time, the Earth changed, and deposits of sand, clay, and other minerals were formed, burying the peat. Sedimentary rock...