Biomass briquettes are a biofuel substitute to coal and charcoal. Briquettes are mostly used in the developing world, where cooking fuels are not as easily available. There has been a move to use briquettes in the developed world, where they are used to heat industrial boilers in order to produce electricity from steam. The briquettes are co-fired with coal in order to create the heat supplied to the boiler.
Briquetting is the process to improve the characteristics of biomass as a renewable energy resource by densification. Densification means less volume needed for the same amount of energy output.
The advantages of processing and densifying of biomass are not only limited to the higher energy content.
