Biomass: an Overview

The chapter reports a systematic overview on available biomass. The residual biomasses have been characterized from a structural point of view and have been reported as high-molecular-weight polysaccharides, which mainly consist in cellulose and hemicelluloses (60%–80% of woody material) and lignin. A second part has been dedicated to comment agriculture and forestry biomass used for energy production, including grassy starch, sugar, lignocellulose, oil crops, and lignocellulose, organic, and marine residues. Also brief biomass processing treatments have been reported mainly focusing to thermochemical, biochemical, and physicochemical conversions to energy. Finally, trends of global energy use and production from different sources and in particular from biomass, in the period 1965–2015, have been reported and discussed.