Biomass Biomass can be garbage, wood chips, sugar-cane remnants or grass. Almost all the renewable-energy power in Florida comes from biomass, including three plants in Miami-Dade and Broward. Biomass produces 1,100 megawatts of power for Florida, according to a recent study by Navigant Consultants. About half of that comes from 11 waste-to-energy plants that process local garbage and trash and the other half is the leftovers from timber and sugar cane industries. Miami Dade’s yard waste is used to produce 77megawatt biomass facility. The County’s Resources Recovery Facility is one of the most technologically advanced waste-to-energy facilities in the world, while featuring a state-of-art air quality control system. More than 1.2 million tons of waste is processed annually, with 270,000 tons of the material being processed into a biomass fuel for export out of Miami-Dade County. The RRF is supported by three County-owned and operated landfills and three solid waste transfer stations. While receiving waste from these facilities, they will separate all aluminum and ferrous metals, from the garbage, to be sold to recycling plants. The garbage is then shredded and used to generate electricity. Their process produces a biomass fuel which is used on site to supplement the refuse derived fuel. The remaining biomass fuel is sold to cogeneration facilities in Central Florida. The ash product resulting from the waste-to-energy process is 10% of the original waste material delivered to the plant. This material is placed in an ash landfill located adjacent to the plant. The power that is sold goes to Progress Energy Corporation and is sufficient to operate the plant and to supply the electricity of approximately 40,000 homes. Broward County has two biomass facilities. The south waste-to-energy facility provides reliable, environmentally safe disposal of public solid waste for Broward County Florida, while generating clean, renewable electricity to sale to local utility. Designed, constructed, owned and operated by Wheelabrator. They process up to 2,250 tons per day of public solid waste. They have an electric generating capacity of 66,000 kilowatts; the equivalent of supplying the electrical needs of 38,000 Florida homes. The north waste-to-energy facility, a little larger, provides up to 2,250 tons per day of public solid waste. They also have the electric generating capacity of 68,000 kilowatts; the equivalent of supplying the electrical needs of 39,000 Florida homes. Wheelabrator's waste-to-energy facilities today represent state-of-the-art, modern materials handling, trash combustion, refuse boiler design, air quality control, electric power generation and ash residue recycling and management systems. In all five independent power plants they have the generating capacity to produce 227 megawatts of clean energy using a variety of waste fuels including wood waste, waste tires and waste coal. The plant operates as follows, the soil waste is driven into storage, were from there it goes into a hopper, that will be evenly distributed on a multilevel furnace boiler unit. It then burns the soils, separating metals and ash for recycling. The steam crated rises through boiler tubes, then into a high pressure steam turbine were it will then crate electricity. The steam is then condensed and returned to the boiler unit. Florida Crystals, located in West Palm Beach, makes organic and natural sugars and organic agave nectar. They use their crops and urban wood waste as fuel to generate renewable electricity. They own and operate the largest renewable energy facility of its kind in North America and one of the largest in the world. They recycle urban wood and vegetative waste with their leftover sugar cane fiber to produce clean, environmentally-friendly electricity that powers our sugar operations as well as 60,000 homes. Because of their use of biomass they have reduced the use of using harmful fossil fuels, cutting greenhouse gas emissions by hundreds of thousands of tons each year, helping to reduce global warming.
Green Circle Bio Energy Inc., located in Cottondale, has built the largest wood pellet plant in North Florida. Their manufacturing and logistics concept provides a superior renewable energy product from both sustainability and net energy gain points of view. Their product is produce form southern yellow pine because this plant was built in a wood fiber rich area. The white pellet, has less than 1% bark content, it has moisture content of 7 - 10%, its ash content is approximately 0.5%, its energy content is 17.2 GJ/mt (4.8mwh/t), it has a cylindrical shape with dimensions of; Diameter: 8mm, Length: Max. 32mm, and it has no chemicals added. These pellets are supplied to power generating industry for co-firing in coal based power plants. Their production capacity is 560,000 tons per year. It is 225 acres and there is minimal use of fossil fuels during their production.
There is a 100-megawatt biomass power plant that has been approved to start being built in Gainesville, Florida. They will be fueled by a local supply of leftover clean woody waste using urban wood waste, wood processing wastes and logging residues. American Renewables will build, own and operate this facility and will sell all the energy and environmental attributes generated from the facility to Gainesville Regional Utilities for a period of 30 years. Another benefit of the creation of this power plant the jobs also being created.
Florida Power & Light, the state's largest utility, reports that in 2007 it purchased 1.5 million megawatt-hours from biomass plants totaling 303 megawatts of capacity - a tiny fraction of the 25 million megawatts that the utility uses. Biomass supporters will point out that this waste produces baseload power, fuel plants around the clock, while solar power usually operates about 20 to 25 percent of the time.
As of April of this year, the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Energy announced up to a $30 million funding for over the next three to four years for our annual Biomass Research and Development Initiative program. This fund will help to advance biofuels, bioenergy and high-value biobased products. Candidates who are seeking funding must propose projects that integrate the science and engineering research for the three technical areas that are critical to the broader success of alternative biofuels production: feedstock development, biofuels and biobased products development, and biofuels development analysis. They are also to seek out projects that display the use of biodiesel in farming equipment and processing facility operations that are used to produce grain and/or cellulosic ethanol.
University of Florida in Gainesville, Fla. received $5,430,439 from the Biomass Research and development to help in a project that is to improve the production and sustainability of sweet sorghum as an energy crop. The University will identify the plants genetic traits associated with drought tolerance through genetic mapping and will select strains that produce high biomass yields and can be easily converted to fermentable sugars.
Through biomass characterization, NREL develops, refines, and validates rapid and cost-effective methods to determine chemical composition of biomass samples before and after pretreatment, as well as during bioconversion processing.

Works Cited
BR&D, Biomass Research and Development; http://www.usbiomassboard.gov/index.html
Florida Crystals; http://www.floridacrystals.com/content/112/renewable-energy.aspx
Green Circle Bio Energy Inc., Renewable Energy; http://www.greencirclebio.com/index.php
Highlands Today; http://www2.highlandstoday.com/content/2009/jan/04/lc-biomass-fuels-to-the-rescue/
Miami Dade County; http://www.miamidade.gov/dswm/factsheet_resources_recovery_facility.asp
NREL, National Renewable Energy Laboratory; http://www.nrel.gov/
United States Department of Agriculture; http://www.csrees.usda.gov/newsroom/news/2011news/05052_brdi.html
Wheelabrator Technologies Inc., Broward County; http://wheelabratortechnologies.com/