One Man's Reasons - Why Biodiesel instead of Petrodiesel

Here's a post that has been resurfacing from JohnO- pretty compelling, especially when you consider all the deaths there've been since this was written a couple years ago:

"Based on December '04 to May '05 casualty figures (437 US deaths, 2431 Iraqi deaths, using the lowest published numbers), and Iraq's oil production that the US bought for the same period (3,304,000 barrels), and production efficiency of 50% converting raw oil into gas and diesel:

For those who only care about US deaths, that's 158,774 gallons of fuel per US citizen casualty in Iraq.

For those who care about Iraqi deaths, that's 28,542 gallons of fuel per Iraqi citizen killed in fighting in Iraq.

My wife and I use about 600 gallons of fuel each year. If we used fuel from Iraqi sources, we could drive 48 years before we're responsible for one Iraqi death, or 264 years before we're responsible for one US death in Iraq. Those prices are too high for me.

OK, "my" petroleum supply is from Canada or Montana, so why should I worry about Iraqi fuel? Because SOMEONE is using that fuel in the US. If I can use locally grown fuel sources (Canola grows very nicely here, and there's still abundant used cooking oil), that someone could be using the Canadian fuel, instead of Iraqi fuel.

I'd rather have a farmer's sweat on my hands than someone's blood.

That's my fuel philosophy in a nutshell.

Regards,

JohnO"

Harvesting Clean Energy and Montana Oilseed & Biodiesel Workshop

These are two separate but great conferences back to back at MSU in Billings Montana. I went to the oilseed & bio conference last year and learned a ton about how to go from seed to bio, including a visit to a local farm oilseed crushing operation. See my blog entry from Jan 14, '08.. The Harvesting Clean Energy conference includes wind and solar..
www.biolyle.com

Big Oil poised to take over biofuels?

They've already got the pipelines...

www.biolyle.com

Biodiesel in School Buses

Even in these hard times, some forward-thinking school districts like this one in S. Carolina are realizing that it's a great investment to recycle their cafeteria oil into clean-burning biodiesel. A few years ago, I helped start the Breathable Bus Coalition, which aimed to do that very thing. We no longer meet, but our website is still up and has info that may be helpful to anyone interested in this effort. Diesel exhaust contains at least 15 known carcinogens, and it's been shown that some of that exhaust gets into the cabin of the bus where the kids breathe it in. Every drop of diesel that is replaced with biodiesel is going to be an improvement for kids' health.
www.biolyle.com

Additional Fall '08 Homebrew Biodiesel Class- Nov 23

I've added the following class, which will include tour of my homebrewing setup afterwards- please forward to anyone you think might be interested... Thanks, Lyle

Brew Your Own Biodiesel!
Sunday November 23, 2008 from 1 PM - 5 PM
Learn all the tricks to making high quality biodiesel- See class description below.
Includes visit to BioLyle's workshop after class
Fee: $50
Location: Lakewood Seward Park Community Club, 4916 S. Angeline, Seattle 98118
Class size limited! Please register in advance if possible.
Register at: http://biolyle.com/workshops
or by calling: 206-354-6802
More info: classes@biolyle.com or biolyle@gmail.com

A hands-on workshop to learn all the basics to make your own high quality fuel for about $1 per gallon. In this workshop you will do titrations, make small batches of biodiesel with different oils, and learn the tricks to make quality biodiesel every time. We will also operate a small-scale "Appleseed" reactor during class. This system will be compared with the automated BioPro system which the instructor uses to facilitate fuel-making for a Bring-Your-Own-Oil type coop. The class will also cover topics, such as chemistry of the reaction, quality control, vehicle compatibility, cold weather issues, methanol recovery, disposal of wastes, and how to run a successful coop. Whether you just want to learn more so you can decide whether or not to use biodiesel, or you want to make your own brew, this class will help you get underway.

Natural diesel from fungus!

Check out this article about a fungus that produces compounds very similar to diesel..
www.biolyle.com

Kuma Shasta Biodiesel Stove

Close up view of the Shasta model, which heats our 1700 sq ft house quite nicely. For more info, go to: www.biolyle.com/kuma

New Eastside Biodiesel group meeting Oct 6

Regular educational and discussion meetings starting in North Bend

Open to the general public…free!

Kick-Off Meeting will be held Monday, 6 October 2008, 7:00pm – 9:00pm at the North Bend Railroad Depot, located in downtown North Bend at 205 McClellan Street.

Then after, free regular meetings will be held 7:00pm-9:00pm on the second Wednesday of every month at the same location.

For more information including driving directions- contact Stephen Kangas at 425-503-9876 or stephen@kangas.com

http://biolyle.com

Next Tues 9/23/08 NW Bio mtng - Renewable Diesel

NW Biodiesel Network Monthly Meeting: Tues, September 23, 2008, 7 - 9 pm, Phinney Center, 6532 Phinney Ave N. Seattle 98103

Other Diesel Alternatives: Hype or Hope?
Are you curious about those other biofuels you've been hearing about? What is renewable diesel, green diesel, bio-crude, and sunfuel? How will these other diesel alternatives impact biodiesel and who is championing them? Get the low-down at Other Diesel Alternatives: Hype or Hope? Hear from a variety of speakers on this controversial topic. Get your questions answered! 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm, Seattle Phinney Center, 6532 Phinney Ave. N, Seattle WA 98103. Cost is Free. Information at www.nwbiodiesel.org/

Bill Gates invests in algae fuel

Looks like Bill is getting into the renewable energy biz, with investment in a company that claims to be able to make several fuels from algae, including gasoline. Check it out here..
http://biolyle.com

Testing for water in oil

If your oil looks cloudy, that's a sign that it has water in it. Water really inhibits the biodiesel reaction, so if it's there, you'll want to dry the oil well. You can tell if there's water simply by putting some of the oil on a hot frying pan- if it bubbles, there's water..


http://biolyle.com

Free barrels/drums, buckets

Check out the listings here in the IMEX exchange...

www.biolyle.com

Videos of using BioPro190

Here's a nice way to filter the oil, using a dryer screen!


and here's the procedure for adding the chemicals and starting the batch..



Making a simple KOH funnel using a piece of X-Ray film:



www.biolyle.com/biopro

Great Conference!

The 2008
Collective Biodiesel Conference in Golden, Colorado was a lot of fun with many great presentations and wonderful people. I especially enjoyed the students from Dickenson College and their presentations about glycerin composting and methanol recovery. One of the pics here shows Andrew with a slide of their reflux column on top of their Appleseed. They pack the 30 inch pipe with copper scrubbing pads for the water contaminating the methanol vapor to condense on, thus creating higher purity methanol. I love simple technology like that! Heating up to 260 deg F, they're still able to get 95% + purity. Their glycerin composting experiments were carefully done, and show that adding glycerin (with methanol removed) stimulates plant growth in their initial experiments. They've already published some of these results in Biodiesel Smarter magazine, a great new publication for and by biodiesel homebrewers. Plus I really had fun hanging out with these bright young folks, and look forward to hearing about their future projects. Click here for more info..
It was also great to hear from folks talking about their biodiesel coops and hearing how they work and deal with many of the same issues Dirty Hands has dealt with.

All of the presentations plus video will eventually be posted on the website, so stay tuned. Many thanks to organizers John Bush and Jonathon Meuser- they really worked hard and brought an amazing group of people together.

Collective Biodiesel Conference 7/18 - 20

If you can swing it, the Collective Biodiesel Conference in Golden Colorado will be fantastic. This is grass roots biodiesel at it's best, and will include folks from lots of biodiesel coops, and experts such as Girl Mark and Matt Rudolf from Piedmont Biofuels Coop, and many others. I'll be presenting about The Dirty Hands Biodiesel Coop in Seattle, which has been going for over a year now providing sustainable reasonably priced biodiesel for it's 20+ members. You'll learn from many experienced biodieselers who will cover most every topic you can think of. Check it out at: http://www.collectivebiodiesel.org/
BTW, my workshop in Everett this Saturday 7/12 still has space, and this will the last one I do till late September. Hope you can make it. Info: www.biolyle.com/workshops

Packed workshops! Tacoma and Seattle - form a bio-making coop!

Wow, the high price of commercial fuel has sure sparked interest in homebrew biodiesel! My workshop in Tacoma in June had a record 41 people, and about 30 showed up at the Phinney Center in Seattle last weekend. I've been taking emails and zip codes of folks interested in joining forces to brew biodiesel, so I can help match them up by neighborhood. Let me know if you're interested: biolyle@gmail.com Pics below, and many thanks to Jamie Paulson and Derek at Suite 133 for putting the Tacoma workshop together.. Here's a link to Jamie's blog.

Bio-Confusion- the Biofuels debate

Last week the Seattle PI wrote a big piece about the food vs fuel debate.. My big beef is that biodiesel has gotten lumped under the term biofuels which have gotten a bad name because of ethanol from corn... I wrote a letter to the editor responding, which they didn't publish, but hey, that's the beauty of having a blog! Here 'tis:

I think it's a good thing that there is a debate about the environmental sustainability of biofuels, but as "Dr Dan" Freeman is quoted as saying in the article "Bio-debatable: Food vs fuel," biodiesel is being unfairly maligned because people are confusing ethanol issues with biodiesel issues and painting them all with the same brush with the now dirty word "biofuels." A lot of the reason biofuels have gotten a bad name is because of the unsustainable way that ethanol is produced in this country- from corn, which is displacing food crops and yielding a marginal greenhouse gas and energy benefit. Also, a lot of attention has been given to biodiesel made from palm oil which is sometimes obtained by cutting down rain forest, obviously not a good thing, yet according to the NW Biofuels Association less than 0.1% of all biodiesel made in the US is made from palm oil (which mostly goes to food and cosmetics). Most biodiesel in this country is made from soybeans, where the oil is a byproduct of generating the crushed meal which is mostly fed to cattle. (This fact alone should have us thinking more about becoming vegetarians than use of biodiesel when trying to come up with solutions to the global food crisis). A major study by the National Renewable Energy Labs states that biodiesel made from soybean oil yields over three times as much energy as required to produce it, and reduces greenhouse gases by 78% relative to diesel fuel production. When produced from waste restaurant oil, other studies have shown a 7 fold energy gain and 90 - 95% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. True there's not enough waste restaurant oil to solve the world's energy needs, but there are other environmentally responsible ways to produce biodiesel too. A farmer from Eastern Washington wrote in to the NW Biodiesel discussion list that the canola oil she contributes to the area's biodiesel refinery is grown on marginal land with minimal inputs and no pesticides and is such a nutritious source of pollen and nectar that it helps the bees recover from the fruit and nut pollination season. Similarly, mustard seed can grow where food crops can not, and the crush yields a natural pesticide.

And let's look at other costs. Diesel exhaust has been shown to contain at least 15 known carcinogenic compounds. Biodiesel carcinogenic emissions are 90 - 95% lower, and the pure fuel is non-toxic enough to drink (I like to take a sip when I do presentations!). Also, are these studies comparing biodiesel to petrodiesel taking into account the full environmental and health costs of the military protection of our world's primary oil sources? Are they factoring in the highly polluting transportation by diesel fuel burning ships thousands of miles to carcinogen spewing oil refineries? (think "cancer alley" in Louisiana). Doesn't it make a heck of a lot more sense to transport our fuel source over a few mountain ranges than over a few thousand miles from the Middle East?

Biodiesel is a clean burning fuel that should get some more positive press as a way to begin to clean up diesel emissions and reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Certainly we need to consider the environmental aspects of our fuel sources, but also recognize that there are levels of sustainability in production methods, and not be sucked in by generalizations such as "biofuels are a scourge" as Duff Badgely was quoted as saying in the PI article. As someone who has been happily making all his own fuel for over five years from waste restaurant oil (and teaching others to do the same), I shake my head over the confusion and bad press over biodiesel, and hope people will take another look.

Handy TDI videos, eg how to change your fuel filter

Check out these useful video clips, especially the 2nd one on how to change fuel filter:
http://www.cincitdi.com/richc/

Benefits of growing canola for fuel AND food

Here's a post from Becky a farmer in E. WA:

I'd like to add a little firsthand info here as to growing BD feed stocks. We're farmers in Eastern Washington. We grew 260 acres of canola last year and had another 260 acres planted for 2008. I drive a VW Passat diesel and a 1999 Ford F-350 diesel (when I have to have the pulling/hauling power) running 100% Washington grown canola oil BD (except during the winter when I have to blend) in both of them. I pay full price for my canola BD and will continue to do so to support my local BD processor and the local Eastern Washington economy.

Our canola is grown with minimal inputs, no pesticides and supports a huge number of honeybee hives for local apiaries during the June bloom, which greatly improves their health and general wellbeing. And for those thinking the land used to grow this canola is taking away from other food crops, it's not. It's grown on ground that would otherwise be left empty, or fallow, producing nothing. So, we're not reducing food production at all on our farmland...we're increasing it. The canola meal is a highly sought after feed for all kinds of livestock from cattle, milk cows, poultry, etc.. In fact, the dairy farmers absolutely love it because it increases the butter
fat and omega3 fatty acids in their milk.
Just thought some of you might be interested with what some of your
Washington farmers are doing.

She added this later:

The honey bee industry is in really big trouble right now due to unexplained diseases and losses in hives all over the world. It is critical to the health of the bees to have a large, highly nutritious source of pollen and nectar to recover from being hauled down to California and back up during the fruit and nut pollination season. The canola provides that critical need at just the right time.

Japanese Biodiesel Around-theWorld Adventure

Yesterday we (our coop- Dirty Hands & Madrona) hosted the team from Japan as it begins it's adventure, making biodiesel from donated waste veggie oil as they go. I've had a great time hanging out with them- Shusei, Satori, and Tatsu. Shusei Yamada had the idea and designed the elaborate and beautiful processor, which amazingly fits in the back of the Toyota Landcruiser. It's on a track so it can slide out and allow for adding oil and chemicals. Shusei is no stranger to around the world adventures or biodiesel. He works as a photojournalist, and is also an off-road racer. He's crossed the Sahara on motorcycle, raced the United Arab Emerites Desert Challenge in a car using biodiesel, and has travelled to 140 countries. And he's a really nice guy! Very down to earth, so to speak, gentle and warm-hearted- he seems to really enjoy meeting folks while doing this amazing thing to raise awareness about the need for alternative and environmentally friendly fuels. The launching ceremony was great fun- see today's story in the Seattle PI.
They'll be heading south to LA, and then east- if you'd like to contact them and help them with publicity and most importantly oil donations, reply to this post, or email me at biolyle@gmail.com and I'll put you in touch with Satori, the team's wonderful organizer. And now for some pics! Yes they use ion exchange resin for washing, so no water...

Methanol sources

Washington
Tarr, Inc 4510 B St NW # B Auburn, WA 98001	253-859-2979	KOH, Methanol	Map It
Advanced Toys for Trucks 12803 Hwy 99 Everett, WA	425-485-3682	Methanol	Map It
G&M Honest Performance 33210 Pacific Highway South Federal Way, WA, 98003	253-838-7070	Methanol	Map It
Wilcox & Flegel 940 Industrial Way Longview, WA	360-423-7600 open 7:30-6:00	Methanol	Map It
Cascade Columbia Distribution Co. 6900 Fox Ave. S. Seattle, WA. 98108 206-763-2350	KOH,	Methanol	, sulfuric acid
Ronald G. Grogan CHEMCENTRAL 6308 E. Sharp Ave. Spokane Valley, WA	866-885-2605	Methanol	Map It
Pacific Coast Chemicals 530 Andover Park West Tukwilla, WA 98188	206-223-0006	KOH, NaOH

Oilseed Fun in Montana

As a city slicker, I'm used to finding my oil ready made (ie in the oil dumpster out back of the restaurant). A missing piece for me has been how's that stuff get produced to begin with. At the MSU Oilseed & Biodiesel Conference in Billings last week, I learned a thing or two about farmin', crushin', and doin' some real work! This day and a half conference was excellent, complete with the perspective of the farmers, the scientists (featuring world-renowned biodiesel expert Jon van Gerpen from Univ of Idaho biodiesel ed program), economists, and government officials. My favorite presentations were by a rancher Ken deBoer who with little previous farming experience, decided he wanted to try and grow his own fuel. He planted camelina seed on two lots that he said were bad and really bad as far as soil quality. And without watering or fertilizing he was able to actually get plants to grow, gathered seed, crushed it and produced some oil- about 14 gallons from his two 1/2 acre lots (and 500 lb of seed). His yield was only about 350 lb per acre, which is low compared to the 1000+ lb some have achieved. His one-ton crusher was real slow (and is now for sale!), and he learned a lot of other things about the process. Another speaker pointed out that you can save yourself a lot of time and money if you use a bigger crusher and just get the job done faster.
Interesting fact- the cake from camelina crushing is highly nutritious with very high protein content- cows love it!
The presentations from this and other Montana biodiesel workshops are now online here.

After the workshop, we visited a farm where they had an oil seed press up and running. They were still breaking the crusher in, with not a lot of oil coming out yet. Apparently the crushing screw has to be worn smooth before it becomes very efficient. Their operation looked very Rube Goldberg and kinda like a scene from the movie Brazil- with the steam billowing out (used to heat the press), and the separate motor galloping along, with long drive belts flapping about. Check out the short video of these intrepid crushers: by the way, the crusher is from tinytechindia.com
Here's the you tube crushin' vid..



Happy crushin'...

BioLyle
http://biolyle.com

Eathrace ship trying for around-the-world record on biodiesel

Talk about committment! Not only are they spending millions on the record attempt, but the captain and some of the crew even underwent liposuction to contribute some fuel from their own bodies to the effort- see this article and nice short video promo: http://blog.wired.com/cars/2007/12/around-the-worl.html
I was on the boat when it visited Seattle last year- it is amazing!