The biomass inventory

The sinews of war in the biobased economy is access and availability of the resource.

This resource comes in the form of waste, "a product no one wants" which is then burned or abandoned.

The degradation of this resource emits CO2, or methane, a greenhouse gas that is 20 times more powerful than CO2.

On the other hand, collected, dried and valorized according to existing technologies, this biomass can usefully have a "second life" in the form of bioenergies, biobased material or hygienised fertilizer.

The challenge is therefore to identify the location, the seasonality (each biomass in its season) and the quantities available and a source of added value and jobs.

Biogaz , the dry batch and the slurry process

Biomethanation is a fermentation process similar to that taking place in the rumen of a cow. The materials entering the digester (tank where the fermentation takes place) undergo biological degradation carried out by microorganisms (bacteria and archaea).

This fermentation takes place in the absence of oxygen (anaerobiosis).

Two processes are common, the dry method and the wet method (the most common in Europe), they are explained below.

Briquettes & pellets

Pellets and briquettes are standard formats recognized by international markets (ISO 17715, etc...).

These densified biomass formats meet technical criteria (length, width, diameter, etc.) for their compliance to appropriate technologies especially in combustion via boilers.

The circular economy

The circular economy is "an economic system of exchange and production that aims to increase the efficiency of the use of resources and reduce our impact on the environment".

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The circular economy encompasses a very large number of sectors of activity and can be broken down into seven logics of complementary production and consumption which, combined, make sense and reinforce each other:

- Recycling: treatment and recovery of the materials contained in the waste collected.

- Industrial and territorial ecology: search for eco-industrial synergies at the scale of a business area; the waste of one company that can become the resources of another.

- Functional economy: a form of collaborative economy that favors use over possession and thus tends to sell services related to products rather than the products themselves.

- Responsible consumption: rational consumption and orientation of its product choices according to social and ecological criteria.

- Longer service life through the use of re-use, repair and reuse and sustainable supply.

... and many other applications

The biobased economy

Biomass is all matter of animal or vegetable origin that can be used to produce food, energy or materials.

It can be wood, livestock manure, crops or organic waste .... The least by-product, co-product, residue or surplus of what we produce is likely to become a material first of value!

Some examples of "biomass":

Household waste can be converted into biogas to produce heat, electricity and biocompost for agriculture

The pruning's of fruit trees, rather than being burned, are densified in the form of briquettes and serve as firewood. Better, with a heat treatment, these pruning's are converted into biochar, a product equivalent to charcoal and can also be used as fertilizer.