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Biomass Energy from Agriculture

Conversion Techniques and Use

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Handbook of Energy Management in Agriculture

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Abstract

Environmental alarms like climate change, acid rain, and air pollution from the use of fossil fuels and developments in biomass technology have rejuvenated the attention in biomass energy as a renewable and sustainable energy source. Worldwide, biomass energy contributes to 10–14% of total energy demand. In rural areas, 90% of energy is obtained by biomass, and in urban areas it is 40%. The share of biomass is more than one-third of primary energy requirements. After forest, agriculture sector provides the largest contribution for total biomass energy production. Totally, 140 billion metric tons of biomass is produced by agriculture every year. Improper management of such massive amount of agricultural biomass is becoming a growing problem as rotten agricultural biomass emits methane and leachate, and open burning by farmers to clear the fields release CO2 and other harmful particulates in local environment assisting for climate change, water and soil impurity, and local air pollution. This volume of biomass can be converted to a vast amount of energy, and raw materials for energy production can greatly displace fossil fuel, reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, and provide renewable energy to farmers in develo** countries like India, which still lack access to electricity. Using agricultural biomass as energy source will decrease the agricultural waste management cost and would make revenues from the sale of the mended energy. To manage agricultural biomass and to convert it into a beneficial resource, extensive efforts are being taken by many governments and other institutions, and there are stagnant gaps to be filled.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Farm Machinery and Power Engineering, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, Punjab, India

    Santosh Kumar, Shiv Kumar Lohan & Dilwar Singh Parihar

Authors
  1. Santosh Kumar
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  2. Shiv Kumar Lohan
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  3. Dilwar Singh Parihar
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Santosh Kumar .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Soil Science and Agricultural Chemistry, Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India

    Amitava Rakshit

  2. School of Environmental Science, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada

    Asim Biswas

  3. Department of Agriculture, Integral Institute of Agricultural Science and Technology, Integral University, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India

    Deepranjan Sarkar

  4. Borlaug Institute for South Asia, Bihar, India

    Vijay Singh Meena

  5. Department of Geology and Pedology, Mendel University in Brno, Brno, Czech Republic

    Rahul Datta

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Kumar, S., Lohan, S.K., Parihar, D.S. (2023). Biomass Energy from Agriculture. In: Rakshit, A., Biswas, A., Sarkar, D., Meena, V.S., Datta, R. (eds) Handbook of Energy Management in Agriculture. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7736-7_10-1

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