Biomass based energy systems to meet the growing energy demand with reduced global warming: Role of energy and exergy analyses

The demand for energy is growing worldwide and this has to be met with various options in an environmentally friendly manner. Biomass based energy systems are receiving a great deal of attention to meet part of the growing energy demand with reduced global warming. Cogeneration is also receiving a great deal of attention worldwide to meet part of the energy demand due to high overall energy utilization efficiency and reduced pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions. In the present paper the role of biomass energy systems and future scope for various cogeneration systems are discussed. Given the growing energy demand, biomass based energy systems and cogeneration systems will receive a great deal of attention in the coming years to generate power and process heat from various energy sources to meet part of the global energy demand with high energy conversion efficiencies. Also the exergy analysis is receiving attention to analyse various energy systems to identify the sources of irreversibilities and also aids to improve the performance of the systems. The generalized methodology of exergy evaluation has been reported for energy systems.