What is biomass?

Biomass is biological material derived from living, or recently living organisms. In the context of biomass for energy this is often used to mean plant based material, but biomass can equally apply to both animal and vegetable derived material.

There are five basic categories of plant based material:

Virgin wood, from forestry, arboricultural activities or from wood processing
Energy crops: high yield crops grown specifically for energy applications
Agricultural residues: residues from agriculture harvesting or processing
Food waste, from food and drink manufacture, preparation and processing, and post-consumer waste
Industrial waste and co-products from manufacturing

At Birchway, we will be installing a wood pellet biomass boiler. Wood pellets are mostly manufactured from waste products from sawmills and other wood processing industries. The materials used include ground woodchips and sawdust. No chemical additives are needed, the natural lignin of the wood itself serves as a binder.

Why use biomass?

Biomass is a renewable, low carbon fuel. The carbon dioxide emitted when biomass is burned has been taken out of the atmosphere by the growing plant. Even allowing for emissions of fossil carbon dioxide in planting, harvesting, processing and transporting the fuel, replacing fossil fuel with wood fuel will typically reduce net CO2 emissions by over 90%.

For more information please go to the National Energy Foundation web site at www.nef.org.uk