a) Biomass is organic matter, such as wood by-products and agricultural wastes that can be burned to produce energy, or converted into a gas and used for fuel.b) It contains stored energy from the sun. plants absorb the suns energy through the process of photosynthesis , and this chemical energy is then passed on the animals and people that eat them. When burned, the chemical energy in biomass is released as heat.c) There are many ways to convert biomass to energy. Biomass can be converted to other usable forms of energy like methane gas or transportation fuels like ethanol and biodiesel. The production of ethanol for transportation sectora) Ethanol is an alternative fuel produced from starch contained in grains such as corn, grain sorghum, barley and sugarcane through a fermentation and distillation process that converts starch to sugar and then to alcohol.b) Most ethanol in the U.S is made from corn because it is relatively low-cost source of starch that can easily be converted into sugar, fermented and distilled into ethanol.c) Ethanol can be blended with gasoline to create E85, a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. Flex fuel vehicles are designed to run on any mixture of gasoline or ethanol with up to 85 percent ethanol.d) Ethanol can also be produced from cellulosic biomass such as wheat straw, corn stalks, sawdust, rice hulls , paper pulp, wood chips, and energy cane. Which can be converted into sugars and then fermented into ethanol. The production of biodiesel for transportationa) Biodiesel production is based on trans-esterification of vegetable oils and fats through the addition of methanol and a catalyst , giving glycerol as a co-product.b) Feedstock included rapeseeds, sunflowers seed ,soy seeds and palm oil seeds from which the oil is extracted chemically or mechanically.c) Advanced process include the replacement of methanol of fossil origin, by bioethanol to produce fatty acid ethyl ester instead of fatty acid methyl ether.d) In order to expand the relatively small resource base of biodiesel , new processes have been developed to use recycled cooking oils and animal fats though these are limited in volume.e) Hydrogenation of oils and fats is a new process that I s entering the market.it can produce a biodiesel that can be blended with fossil diesel up to 50% without any engine modifications.f) Synthetic biofuel production via biomass gasification and catalytic conversion to liquid using Fischer-Tropsch process offers a variety of potential biofuel production processes that may be suited to current and future engine technologies.