Most of our current energy and electrical production either comes from coal, oil or nuclear power plants. While coal and oil power plants are prime culprits for high CO2 outputs linked to global warming, nuclear power plants are hardly the safe or cheap option. So what other energy options to produce electricity are available to us, and should we follow the same network set-up of a few large-scale electrical production facilities. Wind and solar power gain most of the headlines in the papers on how to generate green electricity. There are also solar thermal power stations where the suns energy is directed by a series of large mirrors to a tower with a boiler at the top. The heat from the sun is directed onto the boiler. The boiler then produces steam, which powers a turbine to produce electricity, which is sent back to the grid. Is it also possible to produce electricity from wood and other biomass resources, even on a small scale. Biomass which includes wood does not place additional carbon into the atmosphere during combustion.

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A process called gasification can turn material such as wood, straw, grasses and any other form of biomass and waste into a collection of gases. These gases include methane, carbon monoxide and hydrogen; with a 1:1 air ratio in a combustion engine the gases can run any internal combustion engine. So even a small setup could be used to run a gasifier on wood or any other biomass and then put the electricity into your home or send it into the grid in return for revenue.. There are several advantages from completing this process on a small scale which include control of your energy cost and supply and additional revenue from selling energy back to the grid. Energy will only become more expensive in the future, generating electricity on a small scale can produce cheaper energy and at the same time generate long term jobs.

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Large-scale gasifiers operate with large unprocessed biomass, and can do so economically and efficiently because of the expensive automated setup. Obviously to keep costs of operation and labour to a minimum automation is also important however the cost of the equipment to justify output must also be considered. Therefore to create an automated low maintenance process on a small scale the best option is to upgrade the raw material into pellets. Pellets have a uniform shape and size and high density, therefore contain very high yields of energy per tonne of fuel compared to unprocessed biomass. By operating a small scale gasifier on pellets provides the level of automation required to operate a small-scale electrical generator efficiently and at a profit.

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Burning wood pellets and other biomass fuel pellets efficiently depends on several factors including volume; speed and temperature of combustion air and burn pot designs. Pellet stoves and boilers come in all different sizes and heat outputs, ranging from the simple designs to cope with premium wood pellets, to more sophisticated designs, which can cope with high ash content pellets, clinker and slag formations and corrosion issues. Burning pellets is far more efficient than burning other solid fuels including logs and coal. Due to this pellet combustion produces much less ash and therefore much less maintenance than burning other fuels. There are other areas of pellet combustion that are attracting interest in both the developed and developing world. In the developed world, pellet BBQ’s are growing in popularity. Both softwoods and hardwoods are being produced from varieties such as apple and cherry wood and the flavours transfer very nicely into the food. Using pellets of these wood varieties also means pellet BBQ’s are also ideal to smoke food. For countries such as Africa and India, using pellets for cooking fuel is getting a lot of interest.

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Basic stove designs using solid combustion technology are being designed so people can use a wide variety of local biomass resources to produce fuel for cooking purposes. Deforestation is becoming an even more serious issue; due to western activities of removing forests there is less wood resources for local people to use in a sustainable way. With open fires most of the energy is lost and combustion efficiency is very poor. So to reduce the deforestation, more resources must be made available in a useable form and combustion efficiency must also be dramatically increased. Basic stove designs such as the rocket stove work on the principles of gasification and complete combustion. This means the stove is far more efficient than an open fire, cooks the food far more quickly and also more importantly uses far less fuel. These stoves require no power supply to operate and also very reliable, which is important to try and speed up improved combustion technology adoption.

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Pellets provide a means to use a far wider range of potential fuel sources other than wood. Agriculture is obviously the main source of income, and there are huge resources wasted after the food crops have been harvested. Straw residues for example in many countries are still simply burnt in the field. This is not only really bad for global warming due to the poor combustion, however it is also a massive waste of useable energy. Straw can be turned into pellets, which is ideal for these designs of stoves.

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