How is electricity created with biomass?
Direct combustion is the simplest and most common method of capturing the energy contained within biomass. Usually these facilities (boilers) produce steam to use either within an industrial process, or to produce electricity directly. They can also produce heat, which is then captured for one purpose or another. Direct combustion technology is very similar to that used for coal. Biomass and coal can be handled and burned in essentially the same fashion because coal is simply fossilized biomass heated and compressed over millions of years. The process which coal undergoes as it is heated and compressed deep within the earth adds elements like sulfur and mercury to the coal – elements which produce noxious emissions when burned. Since biomass does not contain these dangerous elements, combusting it produces no dangerous emissions. Gasification is another method to generate electricity from biomass. Instead of simply burning the fuel, gasification captures about 65-70% of the energy in s
