Analysis on Biomass Resources and Potential of Developing Biomass Energy in Yunnan Province

As one of a agricultural provinces of China, Yunnan has abundant biomass resources such as crops straw, wood wastes and so on. However, the exact annual output of biomass resources has not been statistically calculated. Through carefully collecting and recalculating data from 2000 to 2008 year, the accurate main crops straw yield of Yunnan were calculated by using the Straw to Product Ratio (RPR) coefficient of different crops in this paper. Yunnan produced some 23 million tons of crops straw per year. The three largest contributions to the total output of crops straw were from corn, sugarcane and rice, which amounted to 39%, 28% and 16% of the total crops straw respectively. This paper analyzed the present status of utilization of biomass in Yunnan and proposed that more than 60% of crops straw were burnt in the field at present, which has caused serious environmental pollution. There was still 19 million tons of biomass from agriculture, forestry and flower industry each year can be used as biomass energy resources, which was equivalent to about 9.5 million tons of standard coal, and can provide about 2.76 x 10(14)KJ biomass energy.