After the panel discussion about biodiesel on Friday, I returned to CCCC in Pittsboro on Saturday morning for girl Mark’s biodiesel 101 class. The class was packed and Mark commented on how great the interest in biodiesel is in NC compared to other parts of the country. In the class we had a good cross-section of biodieselers from around the state: truckers, farm workers, students and engineer-types. Some were just biodiesel hobbyists who want to make a little biodiesel for their VW or Mercedes and some were business owners, who want to reduce operation cost for their diesel equipment by making their own fuel.

The class was great. Mark quickly established her authority in all things biodiesel and diesel technology by covering all the biodiesel basics and answering many very specific questions on Saturday morning. The class was a regular crash course in biodiesel making – no-frills and all nuts-and-bolts, mono-and-diglycerides, dewatering-and-titration. We spent some time in the classroom, more time in the lab, and on Sunday we took a field trip to the Piedmont Biofuels farm. We got to see their setup – the 500 gallon, double-jacketed, water heated mothership. Finally we spent several hours in the auto shop at CCCC and put together four appleseed reactors.

The only aspect of the class that was somewhat regrettable was the amount of time Mark had to take to debunk bad information about biodiesel making. Especially the bogus processes from journeytoforever.org took up quite a bit of time. This is a popular website, but much of the information on making biodiesel is total crap. We had one example in class where one of the guys had tried their 2-phase process and produced a dark, blotchy gue. Mark was able to explain why this does not work, and how their faulty biodiesel recipes then lead to bad conclusions about washing and testing.

Many biodieselers have pointed out that the information on the site is bad, but the guy who runs it refuses to correct the information. That’s why girl Mark and other biodiesel experts have created the site biodieselcommunity.org where all the articles are peer-reviewed and publicly discussed in forums.

After the class I went with Roey from Cape Fear Biofuels back to the coop and we worked on the simple, ingenious peanut sheller he’s trying to promote. He poured the concrete Saturday, and on Sunday night we removed it from the fiberglass forms. Now we have to find some time to put it together.

Driving home the 50 miles I had some time to reflect on a busy, fun weekend. After the discussions about chemistry, politics, activism and all the tinkering I felt, and continue to feel, fired up about spreading the word of the good juice. I plan to try to get our coop organized and take it to the next level. And I very badly want to get my own reactor going. I know what to do – it’s time to get busy!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 24th, 2006 at 9:38 pm and is filed under Biodiesel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.