Industrial Uses of Biomass Energy: The Example of Brazil

Industrial Uses of Biomass Energy demonstrates that energy-rich vegetation, biomass, is a key renewable energy resource for the future. Brazil, uniquely, has a recent history of large-scale biomass industrial uses that makes it a specially important test-bed both for the development of biomass technology and its utilisation, and for understanding how this is shaped by political and socio-economic forces. The book analyses the cause for this and the alternatives. It is argued that Brazil's experience with the development for industrial biomass use provides wider lessons and insights in the context of the international movement for sustainable economic development.
This book is an interdisciplinary, multi-author work, based upon a recently completed international study by Brazilian and British experts and will prove a valuable reference to all those working in this field.

Any form of energy can be transformed into another form. When energy is in a form other than thermal energy, it may be transformed with good or even perfect efficiency, to any other type of energy. With thermal energy, however, there are often limits to the efficiency of the conversion to other forms of energy, due to the second law of thermodynamics. As an example, when oil reacts with oxygen, potential energy is released, since new chemical bonds are formed in the products which are more stable than those in the oil and oxygen. The released energy resulting from this process may be converted directly to electricity (as in a fuel cell) with good efficiency. Alternately it may be converted into thermal energy if the oil is simply burned. In the latter case, however, some of the thermal energy can no longer be used to perform work at that temperature, and is said to be "degraded." As such, it exists in a form unavailable for further transformation. The remainder of the thermal energy may be used to produce any other type of energy, such as electricity. In all such energy transformation processes, the total energy remains the same.

Work in the chemical lab is centered on the chemical, biological and environmental aspects of energy technology and the efficient use of our natural resources. This includes, for example, work on renewable fuels such as methane, biodiesel and hydrogen, as well as research on novel uses of geothermal effluents. Environmental monitoring, bioremediation and the prevention of scaling and corrosion in geothermal power systems are further research interests.

Synonyms: Basic Blue 9,trihydrate; Methelyne blue trihydrate; 3,7-Bis(dimethylamino)phenazathionium chloride trihydrate CAS No.: 7220-79-3 (Trihydrate) Molecular Weight: 373.91 Chemical Formula: C16H18ClN3S . 3H2O In biology methylene blue is used as a dye for a number of different staining procedures, such as Wright's stain and Jenner's stain. Since it is a temporary staining technique, methylene blue can also be used to examine RNA or DNA under the microscope or in a gel: as an example, a solution of methylene blue can be used to stain RNA on hybridization membranes in northern blotting to verify the amount of nucleic acid present. While methylene blue is not as sensitive as ethidium bromide, it is less toxic and it does not intercalate in nucleic acid chains, thus avoiding interference with nucleic acid retention on hybridization membranes or with the hybridization process itself. It can also be used as an indicator to determine if a cell such as yeast is alive or not. The blue indicator turns colorless indicating living cells. However, if it stays blue it doesn't mean that the cell is dead or there are no cells. Methylene blue can inhibit the respiration of the yeast as it picks up hydrogen ions made during the process and the yeast cell cannot then use those ions to release energy. In neuroscience, methylene blue can also serve as a non-selective inhibitor of NO synthase. Wiki