Yes … I am selling the Mercedes. It’s a great car. I really enjoy it, but we can’t afford 3 cars any more. The untimely demise of that POS Ford truck tore a big hole in our budget, and so the Mercedes has to go. Here is the listing: This is an original E-series Mercedes [...]

Boy – what a surprise that year had in store for us! Perhaps the greatest change in lifestyle for Laura an me since we had children … and a much bigger surprise than the children! Of course I am talking about our horses, Waldo and Cleo. While building our horsefarm and figuring out the ins [...]

Today I started drying biodiesel batch no. 60 – which means I have produced 3,000 Gallons (12,000 liters) of the “good juice” since November 2006. Praise the Lard! Collecting oil in Durham has become increasingly difficult. The competition is fierce and the restaurants are not as busy as they used to be and therefore they [...]

… or horse manure, to be precise, is a wonderful thing.That’s because the biodiesel production process produces also a significant amount of glycerol that needs to be disposed of (circa 10 Gallons per 50-gallon batch of biodiesel). For years I have taken the stuff to various horse farms in the area and blended it into [...]

One of the first things you do when you start a farm is to buy a farm truck. We bought the land a few weeks ago and last week we bought a 1999 Ford F250 pickup with a 7.3 liter  Powerstroke Diesel engine that produces 235 horsepower (175 kW) and 500 foot-pounds force (680 N·m) of torque. The odometer [...]

Last weekend I made batch #40, which means that over the last 3 years I turned 2000 Gallons (8000 liters) of fryer oil into fuel for my cars, using my fuel production setup in the basement. Currently I collect oil from these restaurants in Durham: ElRodeo, Piazza Italia (at Brightleaf), Dain’s Place and the Down [...]

The German upstart car maker Loremo did a first test of its EV prototype on public roads. Eventually, this vehicle is supposed to be available in three flavors: gasoline (petrol), diesel or electric. The YT video below shows the electric version. Sadly – no sound, just ambient music bubbling along …

Once a year, the good people at Foothills Brewery brew their Sexual Chocolate Stout, and this weekend they began making the ’09 edition available at the brew pub in Winston Salem. To their loyal customers, known as “Footheads”, this is special day, indeed. Foothills brewery does not usually bottle any beer – so its beers [...]

Corn-based ethanol fuel may not be a “crime against humanity” after all. New research (pdf) shows that newer plants can produce a fuel that reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent and replaces a lot of fossil fuel: The ethanol industry currently is producing a fuel that is 48 to 59 percent lower in direct-effect [...]

The German start-up car maker Loremo says it is still on track with production in 2010 and they announced a couple of weeks ago that they will offer the Loremo in three flavors: Electric (EV), Gasoline (GT) and Diesel (LS). While I understand the idea of adding diversity to their product lineup, I hope they [...]

This is very cool: A US airline has completed the first test flight of a plane partly powered by biofuel derived from algae. The 90-minute flight by a Continental Boeing 737-800 went better than expected, a spokesperson said. One of its engines was powered by a 50-50 blend of biofuel and normal aircraft fuel. Wednesday’s [...]

The biofuels landscape has changed quite a bit since I brewed my first batch of biodiesel in Aug. 2006. Demand for alternative fuels skyrocketed when the price for barrel of crude oil surged to almost $150 this summer. Yet, now the price for crude is back below $40 a barrel, while biodiesel feedstock cost remails [...]

My current batch of biodiesel is my greenest yet because I used homemade, bio-electricity to cook it (instead of Duke Power’s dirty coal-based electricity). A couple of weeks ago I bought a little 5KW diesel generator at Costco, plus a 10-circuit power switch. Last weekend I wired the generator to the circuits. Now I have [...]

For quite a while the biodieselers in our area have been wondering what will happen to our cosy little niche when diesel and biodiesel hit price parity at $3.50. Well, here we are – for well over a week now the price of diesel has been well over $3.50 per gallon and since last weekend [...]

The Beluga Skysails, a container ship powered in part by a 500sqm towing kite, has “set sail” from the German North Sea port Bremerhaven across the Atlantic. This is reportedly the first commercial trip of a Skysail powered ship. Spiegel Online has a video (in German). As I have said previously, this is a brilliant [...]

Green Flight Int’l last month completed what they claim was the first-ever jet flight using pure biodiesel: RENO, NV. (October 5)… Aviation history was made earlier this week in the high desert at the Reno-Stead Airport when an L-29 military aircraft piloted by Carol Sugars and Douglas Rodante succeeded in completing the world’s first jet [...]

When we moved closer Durham in June, I started seriously considering the idea of riding my bike to work. Several guys I work with already do that. It’s a great way to stay in shape and reduce your environmental footprint. So, now that the weather is cooler (less than 90F/32°C) I really ran out of [...]

My new ride – a black 1991 Mercedes Benz 300D. She’s at 244,000 miles, and going strong. Well, right now she’s actually short a turbo, but that’ll get fixed next week. Even without the turbo she’s a mighty nice ride, especially now that she’s no longer on that stinky diesel, and running on homemade juice.

Today, Governor Mike Easley signed bill S1272 into law. That bill exempts homebrew biodiesel from the NC road tax. The 30-cents-a-gallon cost reduction is certainly welcome. But, as Lyle recently commented, the bigger picture is really huge, because it allows the homebrewers and SVO-ers to get out of the “closet” as the State DOR does [...]

On this day in 1893 Rudolf Diesel’s engine ran for the first time, and it ran on peanut oil. So today we celebrate “Internationals Biodiesel Day” and raise our glasses to the genius of using fuel that grows back! Praise the Lard!