BACKGROUND Energy efficiency analysis for different biomass-utilization scenarios would help make more informed decisions for developing future biomass-based transportation systems. Diverse biofuels produced from biomass include cellulosic ethanol, butanol, fatty acid ethyl esters, methane, hydrogen, methanol, dimethyether, Fischer-Tropsch diesel, and bioelectricity; the respective powertrain s...

Cyanobacteria have a strong potential for biofuel production due to their ability to accumulate large amounts of carbohydrates. Nitrogen (N) stress can be used to increase the content of carbohydrates in the biomass, but it is expected to reduce biomass productivity. To study this trade-off between carbohydrate accumulation and biomass productivity, we characterized the biomass productivity, bi...

Biomass, as a renewable source of energy, can be used in many industries to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels. However, due to the significantly high and varied moisture content of biomass, its use has several drawbacks, such as low total efficiency and process instability. Drying biomass before combustion or gasification can eliminate these drawbacks. Besides these benefits, there ar...

Large scale biofuel production will be possible only if significant quantities of biomass feedstock can be stored, transported, and processed in an economic and sustainable manner. Torrefaction has the potential to significantly reduce the cost of transportation, storage, and downstream processing through the improvement of physical and chemical characteristics of biomass. The main objective of...

Abstract Bioenergy is a critical part of renewable energy solution to today’s energy crisis that threatens world economic growth. Corn ethanol has been growing rapidly in the past few years. Policy-makers and researchers alike are becoming aware that corn ethanol has some serious drawbacks. It adversely impacts food prices and is harsh on soil fertility. Lignocellulosic ethanol on the other han...

Effort of reducing CO₂ emissions in developing countries may require an increasing utilization of biomass fuels. Biomass pellets seem well-suited for residential biomass markets. However, there is limited quantitative information on pollutant emissions from biomass pellets burning, especially those measured in real applications. In this study, biomass pellets and raw biomass fuels were burned i...

Earth is a chemical battery where, over evolutionary time with a trickle-charge of photosynthesis using solar energy, billions of tons of living biomass were stored in forests and other ecosystems and in vast reserves of fossil fuels. In just the last few hundred years, humans extracted exploitable energy from these living and fossilized biomass fuels to build the modern industrial-technologica...