Renewable Energy: The Five Types Of Biomass

Our Earth is made up of matter that is everything that has mass and occupies space. The formation of matter is because of energy and one of the examples of energy is the renewable energy. Renewable energy is energy that sources from natural resources that is constantly renewed on a human timescale and cannot be exhausted. Renewable energy is classified into five components which are hydro, wind, biomass, solar and geothermal energy (refer to Figure 1 in Appendix 1).

The first type of renewable energy is the hydro energy. Hydro energy is a form of energy that is generated from the water resource. Water can be a useful source to replace the depending on the fossils source to generate electricity in daily life. The fact that 70% of the Earth’s

According to Lorenzini, Biserni, and Flacco (2010), the term biomass encompasses a large number of materials of an extremely heterogeneous nature. We can state that everything that has an organic matrix is a biomass. Plastics and fossil materials have been excluded, even though they belong to the family of carbon compounds, because they do not have anything in common with the characterization of the organic materials discussed here. In scientific terms, the word biomass included every kind of material of biological origin; it is so linked to carbon chemistry which directly or indirectly derives from the chlorophyllian photosynthesis (p. 133). The advantage of biomass energy is carbon neutral. This is important as biomass is a part of the carbon cycle. Carbon from the atmosphere is absorbed into plants during photosynthesis and when the plant decays or is burnt that carbon goes back into the atmosphere. Because it is a cycle, the next crop of plants absorb that carbon over again, so there is a balance between the amount of carbon that the biomass fuel release into the atmosphere and the amount that they extract from it. This is why biomass fuels do not contribute to global warming. Biomass fuels are clean. However, biomass has disadvantage also as extraction cost is extremely expensive. In some areas we find that biomass projects may not be worth the price and is therefore never finished. This is also true for the harvesting and

Geothermal energy also known as Earth heat is due to the geothermal energy flux (Dipippo, 2012). Dipippo (2012) mentioned that the Earth crust is composed of various types of rocks which contain radioactive isotopes, for example, uranium (U-235, U-238), thorium (Th-232) and potassium (K-40). The radioactive decay of these radioactive isotopes produces the heat reaches the surface. Dipippo (2012) further explains that there are several types of geothermal resources such as hydrothermal (hot water), hot dry rock, geopressure, magma energy and deep hydrothermal. For the application of geothermal energy, Ngo (2008) states that it classified into three types, that are the low-energy, medium-energy and high-energy applications. Low-energy geothermal (temperature between 30°C and 100°C), is found from a few hundred metres to 2500m depth, either directly or through a heat exchanger when the pressure or temperature is too high, is used for heating homes. For medium-energy geothermal situated at any depths from a few hundred metres to several kilometres at a temperature of 90-180°C, can be used to run power stations ranging from a few kW to several MW with a lifespan between 30 to 50 years (Ngo, 2008). In Ngo (2008) study, high-energy geothermal corresponds to steam of temperatures between 250°C and 350°C, are found 1500-3000m. It is used to generate electricity for industrial uses. Advantage of geothermal energy is it causes