Technical Terms and Jargon

I use a whole lot of technical jargon and terms of art on this site. Most of it is energy or chemical-engineering related but it also contains some economic terms. Rather than defining terms laboriously in each entry, I'll try to provide an inevitably incomplete list here:

• Bagasse: The leftover lignocellulosic materials from sugarcane crushing and juice extraction.
• Bio-based: a term that means that a certain substance is made of components of biological origin.
• Biodegradable： a term that means a certain substance has been certified to degrade through living organisms into constituent components. Different standards tend to apply to different products.
• Compostable: a term that means a certain substance can be considered biodegradable without specialized biodegrading conditions. That is, if you toss it in your backyard compost heap, it will become soil.
• Cellulose: A structural polymer composed of repeating (generally hexose) sugar subunits. Found associated with lignins and hemicellulose in biomass.
• DDGS: Dried Distiller's Grains and Solubles. A co-product of ethanol fermentations, most commonly corn but also barley and wheat, that's been dewatered. Used to feed feedlot animals. DDGS and WDG are the same substance with different levels of moisture; the primary difference in the product is effective shelf life.
• EROEI (also EROI): Energy Return On Energy Input (or Energy Return on Investment). Analogous to a conventional financial return on investment, EROEI instead tries to describe the energetic returns of an action. Typically applied to power, fuels, both renewable and non-renewable.
• FOMC: Federal Open Market Committee. A body of the governors of the Federal Reserve Banks of the United States that decide on asset purchases to influence the supply of US currency.
• Fracking: An easier-to-say version of fracturing, describing a technique whereby underground high porosity but low permeability reservoirs of hydrocarbon are extracted by injection of a high pressure fluid and a binder, such as sand. The most prominent and controversial of these techniques is hydraulic fracturing ("hydrofracking") using water as the working fluid to extract oil or natural gas; however, other techniques involve the use of methane or supercritical propane, to name two examples.
• GDP: Gross Domestic Product. The net sum of the value of all goods and services produced in a country using its land and labor.
• GNP: Gross National Product. The net sum of the value of all goods and services produced with the factors of production in that country, including all capital. Not usually measured due to the difficulty of tracking capital across borders.
• GHG: Greenhouse gas.
• GWP: Global warming potential. A scaled factor that takes into account the interactions, half-life in the atmosphere, and greenhouse potential of an emitted gas. The scale is normalized to carbon dioxide = 1. The number is usually given with a time scale over which the number is averaged.  
• Hemicellulose: Hemicellulose is an amorphous heteropolymer formed of sugars, commonly found associated with cellulose and lignin in biomass. Unlike normal cellulose, hemicellulose is much less structural and contains large amounts of pentose sugars, which cannot be digested by most higher organisms.
• Hexose: A 6-carbon sugar. Generally digestible by most higher organisms.
• Humectant: a moisturizing agent used for retaining water in a substance.
• LCA: Lifecycle analysis. An accounting of the (typically greenhouse gas) inputs and outputs of a product over its entire life cycle, from raw materials and fabrication to end use and disposal.
• Lignin: A highly aromatic, hydrophobic heteropolymer, with varying structure between different types of plants, found in the structural elements of plant material in conjunction with cellulose.
• NGDP: Nominal Gross Domestic Product. GDP without correction for inflation.
• Pentose: A 5-carbon sugar. Generally digestible only by genetically modified organisms or by detrivoric bacteria.
• Photobioreactor: A growth vessel for microalgae or other phototrophic organisms that includes some form of agitation and a method for light penetration. Depending on complexity, it can also include such features as pH control, dissolved gas concentration monitoring, etc. Often I will abbreviate this term to PBR, but will try not to do so without first writing it unabbreviated.
• WDG: Wet Distiller's Grains. A co-product of ethanol fermentations, most commonly corn but also barley and wheat, partially dried but still with a high moisture content. Used to feed feedlot animals. WDG and DDGS are the same substance with different levels of moisture; the primary difference in the product is effective shelf life.