Biomass boilers, also called wood-fuelled heating systems, burn organic material such as wood pellets, wood chips or logs in order to provide warmth in one room or power hot water and central heating systems.
A useful form of renewable energy, they can use organic material other than wood, too, including food or industrial waste as well as crops.
They work by burning the organic fuel in stoves and boilers and using the energy generated to heat space and/or water. Because of their environmentally friendly benefits, they are becoming more common in both business and domestic settings.
But, as with all types of energy, they have their pros and cons.
Pros
Because it is organic, biomass is considered carbon-neutral due to the fact the amount of carbon dioxide released when it is burned is the same as that absorbed by the material when it was alive.
People and businesses wanting to reduce their overall carbon emissions therefore see biomass boilers as one of the more environmentally friendly ways to heat their home or office space. Using locally sourced fuel will lower this carbon footprint even more.
The Telegraph, says the properties most likely to benefit from biomass boilers are large homes in rural areas without access to gas.
They can provide an easy-to-use form of heating for remote farms and houses whose owners do not want the expense involved in connecting to the national grid.
Being responsible for generating your own heating will also protect you from escalating energy costs imposed by gas and electricity companies – and may well make you money, too, as government incentives may be available for installing ‘green’ energy.
Cons
If the fuel is not sourced locally, then there are of course additional carbon emissions involved in transporting the fuel to the boiler. In addition, if large swathes of land are dedicated to producing biofuel crops, the environmentally friendly credentials are vastly undermined.
Biomass boilers also require regular cleaning and maintenance to make sure they perform correctly and efficiently.
Taking these factors into account, you may well be better off with a traditional gas or oil boiler – for boiler installation in Gloucester, see a firm such as hprservicesltd.com.
Installing a biomass boiler is not cheap either. Consider it an investment which will pay for itself over time, not as a short-term way to save cash.
Where biomass fuel comes from
Biomass energy is energy produced from organic material, and because plants can be regrown, it counts as a renewable source. People have burned wood for warmth for as long as we have known it burns, and Marco Polo wrote about seeing biogas produced from a closed waste tank in China. In the late 1800s, Rudolf Diesel designed an engine that could run on vegetable oil.
Timber and agricultural material, such as wood, chips, bark and sawdust, makes up the largest share of biomass energy, and it is the same family of fuels a biomass boiler burns. Other forms include biodiesel made from vegetable oils, animal fats and recycled oils, bioethanol made by fermenting plants, and gas captured from landfill sites and digesters fed with farm waste.
The most common way to turn biomass into electricity is to burn it, heating water to make steam that drives turbines. Where the leftover heat is put to use on site, overall efficiency improves a great deal. Methods such as anaerobic digestion, gasification and pyrolysis speed up the breakdown of organic material to produce gas or bio-oil for fuel.
How wood fuel compares with fossil fuels
Part of the case for burning wood lies in the fuel itself. Gas is a fossil fuel, and much electricity is still generated by burning gas, coal or oil, all of which release long buried carbon dioxide that stays in the atmosphere and adds to climate change. Wood is generally seen as carbon neutral, because the carbon dioxide released when it burns is already part of the natural carbon cycle and can be taken up again by trees and plants that are still growing.
The appliance matters as much as the fuel. Modern wood burners use extra air intakes to keep the fire fully oxygenated, which produces more heat and less smoke, and older models are being replaced with designs approved by DEFRA. In smoke control areas, only exempt appliances should be used, and DEFRA publishes a list of the stoves that qualify.
Where biomass fuel comes from
Biomass is fuel made from organic materials and used to produce heat, electricity and other forms of power. It counts as renewable because the supply keeps coming: waste residues will always exist, forests keep growing trees and crops are grown every year. Typical sources include scrap timber, forest debris, some crops, manure and certain waste residues, much of which would otherwise end up in landfill.
When it burns, the energy stored in the material is released as heat, as anyone with a woodburning stove or open fire will know. Biomass also produces lower carbon emissions than fossil fuels.
There are challenges. Burning anything produces emissions and ash, so equipment must keep emissions within regulations, and some areas are smoke control zones where restrictions apply. Industrial biomass plants also need very different equipment from fossil fuel plants, even though the basic process of generating electricity is the same.