The term “biomass” refers to materials derived from plant matter such as trees, grasses, and agricultural crops. These materials, grown using energy from sunlight, can be renewable energy sources for fuelling many of today’s energy needs.

One of the most attractive and easily implemented biomass energy technologies is co-firing with coal in existing coal-fired boilers. In biomass co-firing, biomass can substitute for up to 20% of the coal used in the boiler.

The biomass and coal are
combusted simultaneously. When it is used as a supplemental fuel in an existing coal boiler, biomass can provide the following benefits:

– lower fuel costs
– avoidance of landfills and their associated costs
– reductions in sulphur oxide, nitrogen oxide, and greenhouse-gas
emissions

Biomass co-firing projects do not reduce a boiler’s total energy input requirement. In fact, in a properly implemented cofiring application, the efficiency of the boiler will be the same as it was in the coal-only operation. However, cofiring projects do replace a portion of the non-renewable fuel—coal—with a renewable fuel—biomass.

Source: [http://www1.eere.energy.gov/]