Using biomass to produce energy makes sense because biomass and biofuels made from biomass are alternative energy sources to fossil fuels—coal, petroleum, and natural gas. Thus, while burning fossil fuels or biomass does release carbon…
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Burning Wood for Energy
Is burning wood for energy a good idea? Certainly, using wood, wood pellets, and charcoal for heating and cooking can replace fossil fuels and may result in lower CO2 emissions overall. Also, wood can be…
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Gasification Technologies
In gasification technology selection, a necessary initial step is to narrow the search down to a smaller subset of gasification technologies that best match the application and have achieved the necessary technology readiness level (TRL). …
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Collection of Landfill Gas or Biogas
Biogas results from the metabolic activity of microorganisms on organic matter. It is created in the biological processes in sewage treatment plants, waste landfills, and livestock manure management systems. Landfill gas is a type of…
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Burning Municipal Solid Waste (MSW)
Burning municipal solid waste (MSW) or garbage in waste-to-energy plants certainly results in less waste being buried in landfills. However, burning this garbage has the potential to produce air pollution and release chemicals into the…
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Algae Energy
Algae represent a potentially promising resource for energy and food production due to their high photosynthetic efficiency. An acre of land growing algae can produce 50 tons of biomass per acre compared to 1 to…
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Liquid Biofuels: Ethanol and Biodiesel
Liquid biofuels are transportation fuels including such fuels as ethanol, biodiesel, renewable diesel, and sustainable aviation fuels. The federal government promotes biofuels as transportation fuels to help reduce oil imports and CO2 emissions. In 2007,…
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Ash Disposal in Waste-to-Energy (WTE) Plants
Ash from waste-to-energy plants often contains high concentrations of the various metals that were present in the original waste, and ash disposal is critical. As an example, textile dyes, printing inks, and ceramics may contain…
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RIN Compliance
RIN COMPLIANCE A Renewable Identification Number (or RIN) is a serial number assigned to the volume of a batch of biofuel for the purpose of tracking its production, transfers, trading, and ultimate use or retirement. …
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LCFS Compliance
California’s low carbon fuel standard (LCFS) was designed to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from transportation fuels inside California. Carbon intensity is measured in grams of carbon dioxide equivalents (g CO2e) per unit energy (MJ)…
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