What is the reliability of a biomass plant?
Reliability depends on redundancy of power plant design and reliability of source materials to burn.
What is the projected long term use and feasibility of a biomass plant. What are the limitations?
Realistically, biomass has great long term feasibility as people will continue to produce large quantities of waste that need to go somewhere. I wouldn’t call it “green” since we shouldn’t be producing so much trash in the first place.
I’m guessing that Brazil burns bagasse (waste by product of sugar and ethanol production) to produce electricity. The sugar plantations in Hawaii used to do this to help run their cane processing machines.
Another good opportunity for small scale biomass power production is harvesting invasive tree species. In Hawaii, some people are working on biomass projects involved the highly invasive albizia tree; it grows very fast and thus out-shades other species and has taken over quite a bit of forested area all over Hawaii.
I disagree with the previous sentiment that land is too scarce to grow crops for energy. Certainly if we continue to build out fertile land, we will not have enough of it to sustain our food, let alone energy, requirements. We need food and energy, and these needs must be balanced against population growth. One of the biggest reasons fertile land is built out is because larger profits can be made from development than farming. In Hawaii and other places all over the world, developers are at constant odds with farmers. If a farmer can eke out a successful living growing tree crops for biomass production, then so be it. It is better in the long-term that we are able to maintain that land for agricultural production – even though it is for biomass, which may not currently be the most elegant solution to our energy demands – than lose it to development. Once land is built on, it will logically NEVER be reverted to farmland. It would be much easier to convert the farm from energy to food crop in the future than to convert the land use from urban to agricultural. Food production in Hawaii and the U.S. in general will probably continue to be less and less economical due to low labor costs abroad. As food crop production continues to wane in this country, agricultural land will be up for grabs. Better to be planting crops for energy than planting buildings. How do you think we ended up in this predicament of land scarcity to begin with? We keep allowing our fertile lands to be developed into urban sprawl.
I suppose fertile space can be either directly or indirectly required to feed a biomass power plant. Garbage / trash both are used to feed power plants and they are called ‘waste to energy’ facilities. The biodegradable portion of municipal waste can be used to fuel biomass plants.
Here’s more info, and if you search the internet a tiny bit you will find tons more.
Where in the world is biomass energy really used and how many plants are there (roughly)
No idea how many plants there are. Biomass is used in many places in the world. It is used in Hawaii. Google HPower. That’s the name of our waste-to-energy facility. They take residential solid waste (the trash collected from everyone’s homes) and burn it to make energy. They employ very stringent air filter standards to help prevent harmful gases that result from burning from leaching out into the air.
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