ABSTRACT
Production of biomass is intended for a number of pur-
poses, including traditional uses as food and feeds, fiber,
and structural materials. The historical use of biomass for
energy, primarily as heat for cooking and space heating,
continues in many parts of the world, but has largely been
supplanted by fossil fuels in power generation, industrial
production, and transportation. Biomass production has
over the last few decades received increasing attention
for its role in again providing renewable sources of energy,
fuels, chemicals, and other industrial products, but at
higher efficiencies and greater selectivity than previously
possible. Motivating much of this renewed emphasis are
issues of energy cost, supply, and security, global environ-
mental benefits stemming from reductions in fossil fuel use
and greenhouse gas emissions, local environmental bene-
fits due to changes in disposal practices for crop residues
and other biomass wastes or to biomass production in
bioremediation and phytoremediation applications, and
rural economic improvement. Biomass production is the
first step in a chain of activities that results in product for
final demand. Biomass is produced either specifically for
the intended application, as is the case of energy crops
grown for fuel, or as a residue of some other enterprise,
such as agriculture, but for which some useful applications
can still be found. Following production are harvesting,
handling, processing, storage, transportation, conversion,
and product distribution that must be properly integrated
into an economically feasible biomass utilization system.
Methods to optimize the overall system have been the
subject of much research, and the production step remains
a key element especially in terms of the quantity, distribu-
tion, quality, and cost of raw material available. For exam-
ple, power generation systems using biomass fuels have
specific constraints as to fuel moisture and composition
depending on whether they employ combustion, thermal
gasification, or anaerobic digestion technologies, and
