w o r d s

350.092 MpH (529km/h) - that is the new land speed record for a diesel-powered vehicle. Andy Green, a British RAF officer set this new landmark this morning with the JCB DieselMax. The vehicle is powered by two 4-cylinder diesel engines that deliver a peak power of 750hp and torque of 1500Nm at 2000 RPM. The engines are based on JBCs 444 engine, an industrial, common-rail injection diesel engine, which usually powers backhoes and other equipment.

In comparison, the fastest piston-engine car is currently Tom Burkland’s Streamliner, at 417 MpH (the official FIA record is 409.978 - set Aug 21, 1991 by Speed0Motive (source). The curent holder of the overall land speed record is ThrustSSC a jet-propelled land vehicle, which achieved 763 mph, or 1227 km/h on October 15, 1997. This was the first time a land vehicle broke the sound barrier.

Yesterday I decided that the biodiesel I made last weekend looked good enough for a fill up. I spent last week washing the stuff in my washtank - first is sprinkled water on it and drained the soapy water from the bottom. Then I put a bubbler in the water below the biodiesel. The rising bubbles drag water through the biodiesel, then they pop and the water sinks back down to the bottom. Kind of like Spongebob and Patrick riding the fishing hooks -up and down and up and down … and every time they pick up the soap from the biodiesel. This process gets the soap out, but it leaves water dissolved in the biodiesel, and that needs to get removed in the next step.

There are several ways to dry washed biodiesel. I chose bubble drying. I just removed the water from the bottom of the washtank and fired up the bubbler, again. I also pointed a box fan at the surface of the biodiesel. Now the bubbles of air pick up the water, and drag it to the surface, where it evaporates. After a couple of days of bubble treatment, the biodiesel had turned from murky to clear.

So Sunday evening, I drained five gallons from the tank and filtered it to 5 microns using a sock filter. Finally, I poured my first homebrew biodiesel into the fuel tank of my 2002 Jetta. I took it for a spin, and all was well. There were only about 1 1/2 gallons of commercial biodiesel left, so it is running on mostly homebrew at this point. I drove about 30 miles (50 KM) today, and I noticed no difference, compared to the commercial biodiesel.

This weekend I brewed my first 30-gallon/120 liters batch of biodiesel, using the modified appleseed reactor I built in the basement. I used fryer oil from a local restaurant that titrated at 1.6 with KOH, so it’s pretty decent quality feedstock. Saturday, Manfred came over and we did the titration, mixed the Methoxide and started the process. I had heated the oil to about 120 deg. F, and then I cut off the heater. When I started blending in the Methoxide, the temperature went down below 100 F (that’s as low as the thermometer goes) due to 6 gallons of the cooler fluid. Once all the Methoxide was blended in, and the pump was just blending the reactant, the temperature went back up to almost 120 F, which is great, as the reaction is an exothermic reaction.

I let the pump run for 6 hours, the I cut it off and let the reactant settle for about 20 hours. On Sunday evening I drained the glycerol and the I pumped the biodiesel into the wash tank. The product came out a tad soapy, and I turned up the spray washer too high at first. So when I held a light behind the wash drum I could not see a separation at all, and I thought the stuff had emulsified … pretty quickly, however, the water settled down, and I started draining the soap water out - 15 gallons so far. I could probably start bubble-washing now, but my bubble stone broke, and so I ordered new ones from Utah BD supply.

So I’ll be washing the stuff this week, and then drying it next week, and before long I should be able to feed my Jetta my first homebrew biodiesel.

For better or for worse - the Personal Computer turns 25 years today. In August 1981, IBM introduced the PC to the masses. Since then, the little beige box has changed the world and left quite a legacy.

Praise the Lard and celebrate the “Good Juice” today! It’s International Biodiesel Day - celebrate VEGPOWER!

Transesterification of a vegetable oil was conducted as early as 1853, by scientists E. Duffy and J. Patrick, many years before the first diesel engine became functional. Rudolf Diesel’s prime model, a single 10 ft (3 m) iron cylinder with a flywheel at its base, ran on its own power for the first time in Augsburg, Germany on August 10, 1893. In remembrance of this event, August 10 has been declared International Biodiesel Day. Diesel later demonstrated his engine and received the “Grand Prix” (highest prize) at the World Fair in Paris, France in 1900. This engine stood as an example of Diesel’s vision because it was powered by peanut oil—a biofuel, though not strictly biodiesel, since it was not transesterified. He believed that the utilization of a biomass fuel was the real future of his engine. In a 1912 speech, Rudolf Diesel said “the use of vegetable oils for engine fuels may seem insignificant today, but such oils may become, in the course of time, as important as petroleum and the coal-tar products of the present time.”
Wikipedia: Biodiesel - Historical background

This weekend I plan on brewing my first big batch of biodiesel at home. I have all the ingredients - the only glitch is that my scale gave up the ghost :( but I’ll borrow one from a fellow biodieseler …

The use of biodiesel in Germany has increased by two-thirds compared to last year, according to press reports of the latest issue of the Wochenbericht des DIW Berlin. Germans overall drive a bit less, but the Germans who have to drive a lot, are switching to the more fuel-efficient diesel vehicles, which now represent 21 percent of the total passenger vehicle fleet in Germany. And I’d bet that more and more people switch to diesel vehicles planning to use biodiesel.

A major motivator for Germans are the fuel prices: a liter high-octane costs 1.398 Euros - that’s $6.76 per Gallon (US)! Considering those prices, I find the 3-percent reduction in average annual driving distance rather modest.

US gas price map by county
International Fuel Price comparison

Today’s Word of the Day was invented (I think) by my boss: picobuckets. We got a good chuckle out of this one during the staff meeting, when he tried to illustrate his consternation at some of the strange measurements of one of his fellow researchers.

Sixty one years ago 140,000 residents of the city of Hiroshima died when the United States Air Force dropped a nuclear bomb on the city. Three days later, the Americans bombed Nagasaki with another nuclear weapon, killing another 74,000 people. We may debate over the role of these bombings in WWII, but we shall never let these images fade away into history, because, despite of the end of the Cold War, we are still sitting on a huge pile of nuclear weapons. We cannot ever unleash this hellish technology again!

What a week: Snow and Tornadoes in South Africa and a deadly heatwave in the US. In the US, the Midwest and East Coast were cooking - New York declared a heat emergency with temperatures of up to 38°C/101F and a heat index of up to 110F/43°C. Here in Bahama it was sweltering, too, with a weekly high of 97F/36°C and over 90 percent humidity.

Rough weather conditions also wreaked havoc in South Africa and in the mountains of Lesotho last week. In Lesotho, eight people had to be rescued after their vehicle got stuck in the snow! And while New York was sweating, Johannesburg had snow flurries for the first time in eight years. On Tuesday, a tornado hit a town in Mpumalanga Province, and caused several injuries and some damage and severe flooding killed five people in the Easters Cape province.

And, of course, Typhoon Prapiroon caused death and devastation in Southern China …

According to the Global Crafts website, Volkswagen of America has backed off:

Volkswagen of America have sent a letter of apology and revoked the Cease & Desist notice. Thank you for your support, I know many of you emailed Volkswagen on our behalf.

They have also offered to work with us towards a license which we hope we can get in the name of the name of the artisans so that they can sell to and Fair Trade importer and eliminate the risk of this occurring again.

We would also like to publicly thank Peter Bloch at Lightyearsip.net who has helped and is continuing to help in this matter.
Global Crafts website, Aug. 3, 2006.

I hope they give their attack-dog lawyers a muzzle, too. Incidents like this are really counterproductive and damage VWs image.

Nevertheless: Congratulations, VWoA. Smart, timely decision.

This is a great example of elephants with sledgehammers protecting a china store: VW of America’s lawyers have sent “cease and desist” orders to the Fair-Trade importers of toys made by the Teenage Mothers of Kenya crafts cooperative:

Teenage Mothers and Girls Association of Kenya is an organization working for the rescue, rehabilitation and economic empowerment of girls and young women. Our programmes focus on helping solve the problems of HIV/AIDS infected children, their parents (often teenage girls who are single), orphans, the poor and the destitute of the community.
TEMAK website

Yeah, this sounds exactly like the type of organization on which VW wants to sick their lawyers. Make an example of these trademark-infringing teenage moms! Can you see the headlines on CNN and NPR: “Volkswagen sues Teen Moms of Kenya”

And over what? Toy cars made from wire!

These young women in Kenya thought it was a cute idea to make little VW Beetle® model cars to sell, so they could make a little bit of money support themselves and their kids. All over East Africa wire toys of this kind are popular and inexpensive fun for kids. And our own, gameboyed, interactivated, hypertained kids love the wire model cars and galimotos we buy at the local Fair Trade store.

VW should be proud that these folks chose the iconic Beetle® for their modest enterprise, and not the far more ubiquitous Toyotas. They should make an advertisement that highlights that when these women think “car” they picture a VW Beetle®!

Get a grip, VW of America. Embrace these women and give them a hand, instead of threatening their fair trade partners.