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Biomass waste and feedstock as a source of renewable energy

Abstract:

The global energy market mainly weighs on fossil fuels like petroleum, natural gas, and coal. As fossil fuel formation in the earth requires thousands of years, their supply is limited. Another major global concern which attained significance is emission of greenhouse gases during fossil fuel combustion. As a sustainable alternative approach, biomass which is a key renewable energy source overcomes aforementioned earth's sustainability concern. On renewable basis, biomass remnants can be utilized directly as fuels or can be transformed to another energy product commonly termed as feedstock which include agricultural crop, forest, wood processing, and algae residues and wet and municipal wastes. Besides being eco-friendly, biomass is highly productive, carbon neutral, and renewable and also requires short period to instantly replace fossil fuels. This chapter describes various biomass feedstock, barriers to overcome, common methods, and novel conversion strategies involved to convert biomass feedstock and waste to bio-based products and their role in bioenergy applications.