Environmental, economic and strategic reasons are behind the rapid impulse in the deployment of renewable energy sources that is taking place around the world. In addition to overcoming economic and commercial barriers, meeting the ambitious objectives set by most countries in this field will require the development of novel technologies capable of maximising the energy potential of different r...

Biomass is a significant source of energy in China today, particularly in rural areas. However, most current use of firewood and agricultural residues for cooking and heating brings with it detrimental effects of indoor air pollution and associated adverse health impacts. In addition, the time spent collecting biomass fuels creates a burden on women and children, which reduces their time availa...

It is well known that fossil fuel combustion has tremendous negative impact on ecology and global climate. It is non renewable as well. The present rate of technological and economic growth of a country may be unsustainable due to rapid consumption of fossil fuel like crude oil, natural gas or coal. Thus people search for viable renewable energy sources like biomass, hydropower, geothermal ener...

In this paper we conduct the analysis of economic and ecological aspects of alternative energy carriers based on biomass sources. These sources encompass short rotation copies, forest wood residue, wood industry residues, waste wood as well as energy crops. In 2010 the energy output from all these biomass-based alternative energy carriers was about 4000 PJ in the EU-15. We show which energy out...

BACKGROUND Fine milling of dry lignocellulosic biomass, without prior chemical pretreatment, can produce a high percent theoretical yield of sugars during subsequent enzymatic saccharification. However, the high sugar yields, necessary for a commercial biofuels process, are costly, with the milling energy input, necessary to achieve such yields even exceeding the energy content of the biomass. ...

The present review article makes an attempt to comprehensively review various aspects of biomass energy sources, environment and sustainable development. This includes all the biomass energy technologies, energy efficiency systems, energy conservation scenarios, energy savings and other mitigation measures necessary to reduce emissions globally. Nevertheless, some residues have negative effects...

Coal and biomass are abundant in supply but contain carbon which, to avoid greenhouse gas emissions, needs to be sequestered after the primary energy conversion. A comparison is reported here of the performance of four different coals and biomass in an iron oxide-based direct chemical looping combustion system. The principal aim is to identify the coal and biomass with the highest H2 to CO2 rat...

This study aims to understand people's preferences concerning different energy sources with a particular focus on renewables. Households' preferences were assessed by means of a choice experiment on a sample of people living in Veneto (north eastern Italy). The analysis considered real marketing scenarios, presenting different choice options inspired by real market offers by different companies...