All materials from living beings are biomass, but also materials that are generated by plants and animals both as products or droppings and for our purposes oil. Examples are compost, manure, straw, wood and so forth. In Germany, biomass is legally defined. Since biomass is a regenerative, renewable source of energy, the legislator intends to stimulate the production of energy out of biomass. For example by renewable energy laws which guarantee certain payments for each kWh of electric power from renewable energy sources like the Blue Tower (EEG).
To us, biomass has a particularly interesting quality: When it is heated up under exclusion of air to high temperatures (> 100 °C) – this is called pyrolysis -, around 80% of the biomass converts to a gas. Adding steam and even more heat to this gas will result in a product gas rich in hydrogen (around 50%). Biomass shares this behavior with almost all organic materials, hence with most waste. Therefore, in a broader sense, we define biomass as every organic carbon based material that would release most part of its mass as volatile, gaseous matter under pyrolysis conditions. Therefore also paper, plastics, overlapped foods and so forth belong to biomass.
