Consumption

Tanvir Arfin, Faruq Mohammad, and NorAzah Yusof

Contents

12.1 Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 192

12.2 Leading Economic Factor of Woody Biomass………………………………………………………….. 196

12.3 Bio-Energy in Combination with CCS Power Generation……………………………………………. 196

12.4 BECCS Under Climate Policy……………………………………………………………………………. 197

12.5 Costs Associated with the Delivery of Woody Biomass to Power Plants………………………….. 198

12.5.1 Costs Associated with Biomass Procurement 199

12.5.2 Costs Associated with Biomass Delivery 199

12.6 Methods for the Estimation of Woody Biomass……………………………………………………….. 200

12.6.1 Destructive Sampling-Based Biomass Estimation…………………………………………. 200

12.6.2 Microwave Remote Sensing or Radar-Based Remote Sensing………………………… 201

12.6.3 Vegetation Indices-Based Biomass Estimation……………………………………………. 203

12.7 Error Budget Investigation During Biomass Estimation……………………………………………… 203

12.8 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 204

References…………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 205

Abstract Energy is said to be potentially at the core of modern civilization right from industrial revolution, where technology has modified and redefined the way in any individual or a group that uses the energy, but the technological advancement in all spheres continues to be dependent on its use. The prevailing trend has triggered the need for alternative, renewable and sustainable energy sources which are now being considered extensively and pursued globally to turn aside the possibility of

T. Arfin (*)

Department of Chemistry, UkaTarsadia University,

Maliba Campus, Gopal Vidyanagar, Bardoli 394350, India e-mail: tanvirarfin@ymail. com

F. Mohammad (*) • N. Yusof

Institute of Advanced Technology, Universiti Putra, Serdang, Selangor 43400, Malaysia e-mail: faruq_m@upm. edu. my

K. R. Hakeem et al. (eds.), Biomass and Bioenergy: Processing and Properties,

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-07641-6_12, © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014 climate change at the range of attaining a state of irreversibility. A versatile raw material, biomass, can be used for the generation of energy by means of heat production, transport fuels and many essential bio-products which directly or indi­rectly contributes for the current growing demands of energy. When produced and used on a sustainable basis, the biomass-based energy production acts as a carbon — neutral carrier and thus contributes for the reduction of large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions, thereby finding its way for the prevention of global warming. In most developing countries, the quantitative information available on woody biomass resources, at scales related to the procurement area. Based on the growing demands of woody biomass for energy production in the current and near future, the present report is therefore aimed to provide an in-depth information about various agencies linked to biomass resources, leading economic factors of woody biomass, methods available for the estimation of costs associated with bioenergy, etc. Further, we also discussed about the methods to estimate biomass in forest ecosystems by means of destructive sample, microwave remote sensing-based assessment, woody vegetation indices and also provided the investigation methods during the estimation of error budgets.

Keywords BECCS • Allometry equation • Destructive sampling • Microwave remote sensing • Error budgets

12.1 Introduction

Biomass is mainly composed of organic matter derived from plant sources and the very exclusive process such as “photosynthesis” enables trees and plants to store the solar energy into the chemical bonds of their respective structural components. During the photosynthesis process, the carbon dioxide (CO2) from the blanket of air present in the atmosphere vigorously reacts with the universal solvent, water from the earth to pro­duce carbohydrates (mainly sugars in the form of glucose) and this constitutes the building block of biomass. The photosynthesis process in the presence of sunlight to form biomass has been expressed in the chemical equation given below.

6H2O + 6CO2 Snnll8ht > C6H12O6 + 6O2

The essential raw materials of photosynthesis, water and CO2 on entering the cells of dorsal side of leaf produces simple sugar and oxygen. Since the earth’s bio­mass exists in a thin layer called biosphere, where the life is supported and stores enormous energy constantly which is replenished by flowing energy from the sun as a result of photosynthesis.

Biomass has two main categories: “virgin biomass” which mainly comprises forestry and energy crops and “waste biomass” leading from the forest thinning, wood residues, recycling, sewage, municipal wastes, food and animal wastes as well as the domestic waste. Despite the advent of modern fossil energy technologies, the biomass still regarded as the vital source of energy for human beings and also for the advancement of raw materials used especially in the present era of the develop­ing world. According to a recent estimation, it has been noted that the biomass production is about eight times higher than the total annual world consumption of energy from all other sources available on earth. According to literature reports in 2003, the world’s population uses only a 7 % of the estimated annual production of biomass on the basis of new reading of the production rate (Koren and Bisesi 2003; Berndes et al. 2003).

It is to be noted that the principle of bioenergy production from biomass is the reversal of normal photosynthesis process by the plants, i. e. CO2 + 2H2O light, heat ® ([CH2O] + H2O) + O2. The direct combustion method is the simplest and most common method of capturing and generating the energy which is contained within the biomass. Combustion devices are commercially avail­able and are also a well-proven technology for converting biomass into energy. However, improvements are continuously being made repeatedly in various pro­cesses such as fuel preparation, combustion and flue gas cleaning technology, as a result of demand to utilize new or uncommon fuels, improved efficiencies, mini­mized costs and reduced emissions in the current scenario (Hoogwijk et al. 2003).

The energy generated from biomass combustion is used as the basic heat source for all the processes and the heat energy is used to vaporize the working fluid in the medium available. The vapour is stretched downward in the turbine to produce mechanical energy which is further converted into electricity through hydroelectric­ity and geothermal energy as an alternative source of energy. During the process, an electric boiler is utilized for the preliminary investigation of the whole system and the energy liberated by the combustion of biomass lies in the range of 8 MJ/Kg for wet greenwood to 55 MJ/kg for oven dried plant material; while a 55 MJ/kg is gen­erated from methane combustion and 23-30 MJ/kg for coal burning (Twidell 1998).

Basically, the biomass-based energy production is considered to be a carbon neu­tral process, i. e. the amount of carbon emissions released after combustion are wholly taken up by the plants during their catabolic activity of growth. This results in no net gaining of carbon dioxide by the atmosphere which proves the law of con­servation of energy. If the forest and agricultural residues or wastes are allowed to decompose naturally on their own, the same amount of carbon emissions as biomass — based energy will be released into the atmosphere. The use of biomass as a source of fuel has much wider implications in terms of social, economic, biophysical, bio­logical and environmental aspects. However, the excessive deforestation, i. e. cutting of the trees for fuel needs leads to a reduction in the biodiversity of plant species and also destructs habitat for wildlife, land degradation, soil erosion, etc. The loss of soil can be covered by the use of crop residues and overgrazing increases soil erosion and thus reduces the agricultural production and consumption. Also, the use of bio­mass fuels gives rise to high levels of indoor air pollution caused from various sources affects human health in a very indigenous way.

In recent years, due to the rapid development and existence of the “peak oil” theory into reality, the renewable carbon, i. e. the base of fuels for energy production has been playing a vital role in today’s world economy. Further, in order to depend completely on the carbon-based economy and also to provide energy fully to the current growing population, the research and development efforts are continued to transform the existing fuel-wood technology into a high-tech liquid biofuel tech­nology. Also, a continuous supply of funds have been provided for the research activities to meet the requirements of the international protocols and guidelines of various agencies such as Kyoto Protocol on the Climatic Changes, Reducing Emissions from Degradation and forest Degradation (REDD) and Cleaner Development Mechanisms at smaller village scales level (Gibbs et al. 2007; Woodhouse 2006a, b). The burning of biomass in the atmosphere, especially the fuel-wood, has served as a major source of energy production according to most of the recorded history. D. O. Hall indicates that biomass produces only a 14 % of all energy consumed on worldwide range (Hall 1991). In all the developing countries, fuel-wood produces up to 95 % of energy that is consumed yearly. The most domi­nant use of biomass energy is for cooking and heating and also for some other rural industrial activities including beer brewing, brick firing and pottery making. Other uses of biomass include medicine, food, building materials, household utensils and toys. While biomass fuel is essential for survival in many activities, its use is bur­dened with lots of problems. Its use is inefficient as it generates domestic indoor air pollution, resulting in various health problems leading to deadly diseases. It is nor­mally women who are said to be affected the most, since they spend most of their time in cooking inside the dwelling. The gathering of fuel-wood is also labour demanding and excessive use of wood results in soil erosion as mentioned above. There are some major environmental problems arising in the world due to biomass consumption.

The scarcity in fuel-wood has nowadays resulted in the people of third world countries to rely on the enormous crop residues and animal dung as an alternative sources of fuel, where households are forced to purchase wood from vendors for domestic use. In such a situation, finding the necessary cash to purchase wood or an alternative energy sources, creates an additional burden on the people residing in rural areas. During the decline in woody biomass, a huge array of the use of this versatile resource is affected to its maximum. This means that as the woody bio­mass supply diminishes rapidly, the availability of all the artefacts that comes from trees are also affected due to the uprising circumstances. Since, the woody biomass serves as an important source of energy that is currently the most significant source of sustainable as well as renewable mode of energy production in today’s world. The woody biomass, due to its importance and continued dependence of limited, primarily fixed land occupancy are further burdening the available woodland resources in order to meet the energy needs of the ever growing population. Also in recent years, the occurrences of the continuous changes in woodland occupancy are significantly altering the overall biomass production and subsequent energy genera­tion. Due to such unreliable statistics, the modelling of a structure to meet the domestic energy demands at a local level is becoming a challenge (Banks et al. 1996). In 2010, the extensive and global use of woody biomass for energy was about 3.8 Gm3/year (30 EJ/year), which consisted mainly of 1.9 Gm3/year (16 EJ/year) for household fuel-wood and 1.9 Gm3/year (14 EJ/year) for large-scale industrial use in general. During the same period, the world’s primary energy consumption was estimated at 541 EJ/year and world’s renewable primary energy consumption was observed to be 71 EJ/year, according to International Energy Association (IEA) (2013, http://www. iea. org). Hence in 2010, the woody biomass formed roughly 9 % of the world primary energy consumption and 65 % of world renewable primary energy consumption. Despite the widespread uses of woody biomass for energy, the current consumptions are still substantially below the existing resource potentials available exclusively (Openshaw 2011).

The woody biomass energy potentials do not depend only on the available woody biomass resources but also on the competition between the factors such as alterna­tive uses of those resources and alternative sources of energy in a very consistent manner (Radetzki 1997; Sedjo 1997). These effects can be depicted and separated by using the concept of supply and demand curves which has been defining its importance. The energy wood supply curve defines the amount of woody biomass which is made available for large-scale energy production at various hypothetical energy wood prices, i. e. it summarizes all the relevant information and data regard­ing its application from the biomass sector needed to model large-scale energy wood uses. On the other hand, the energy wood demand curve defines the desired amount of woody biomass required for large-scale energy production at various hypothetical energy wood costs.

The woody biomass is a prevailing attractive feedstock that can be sustainably obtained from nature through the process of photosynthesis for bio-ethanol production (Arato et al. 2005; Zhu et al. 2010). The hybrid poplars in well-managed planta­tions, native lodgepole pine represents a major wood species from forest thinning of the unmanageable forests that are available in large volumes. This requires value — added utilizations to diminish expensive thinning cost for sustainable healthy forest and ecosystem management exclusively in the environment. Thus the intensive utilization of lodge pole pine for bio-ethanol provides an important sector of the feedstock supply which in other words contributes to future economy based on bio­fuels. The woody biomass possess high fibre with strong physical characteristics in addition to significant amount of lignocellulose material than any other feedstock such as agricultural residues, grasses and agricultural waste which makes it more obstinate to enzymatic destruction leading to serious threat (Sassner et al. 2008; Shi et al. 2009). This gives an idea that the woody biomass research should emphasize majorly the upstream processing, i. e. the pretreatment and also the size reduction phenomenon to overcome the inherent recalcitrance which further enhances the subsequent enzymatic saccharification of polysaccharides. The chemical pretreat­ments are commonly capable of improving, generating the enzymatic digestibility of biomass by means of diminishing the non-cellulosic constituents (Chen et al. 2009; Rawat et al. 2013) increasing the size of pore (Grethlein 1985) and breaking down fibre crystallization in a very consistent order (Kamireddy et al. 2013).