Cleaner production alternatives: Biomass utilisation options

The increasing price of energy, the security of supply, the reduction of green house gases, and the scarcity of oil and gas urge the use of more and more renewable energy. An important renewable energy source is the biomass which can be applied for heat, electricity, and transportation fuel production. The heat and electricity production are the so called "direct utilisation" alternatives and the transportation fuel production alternatives are the "indirect utilisation" alternatives of biomass energy. If efficient land use is considered, the alternatives can be compared on the basis of the utilisable energy produced from the biomass per hectare. It is shown that the bioethanol production from corn has about 89-99% less energy production capability than that of the direct utilisation alternatives. The cellulosic type bioethanol production technologies, since these partially directly utilise the biomass energy, have better energy utilisation potential, that is about 40-50% of direct alternatives. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.