Pasadena’s urban homestead, Path to Freedom, held a biodiesel “Fuel Mixin’ Mixer” last Friday. Biodiesel is a viable, sustainable alternative to petroleum that can be used to run any diesel engine Did you know that Rudolph Diesel, inventor of the diesel engine in 1895, built it to run on peanut oil?

A few weeks ago, Jules Dervaes and his family, owners of Path to Freedom, and Nicole Cousino, George Steinheimer, and Kalib met at the mini-organic farm. Their purpose: to build a biodiesel processor out of an old water heater tank. Biodiesel fuel is made from vegetable oil, methanol and lye. The process is called transesterification . Many biodieselers get their oil for free from restaurants. Four million gallons of fryer grease are thrown out every year in this country. Fast food joints often have to pay to have it taken it away. It is sometimes used to make cattle feed but often ends up in landfills. The Path to Freedom group got their oil from a catering company that buys their organic edible flowers and herbs. When processed from free used grease, bio-diesel ends up costing about .60 per gallon...

This weekend Pitzer College in Claremont hosted the “California Biodiesel Consumers Conference”. The conference, organized by Biofuel Oasis in Berkeley, was planned as a two day intensive in education and brainstorming on issues facing passenger-car biodiesel consumers. They want to lay the groundwork for sustainable and homegrown biodiesel businesses to serve those consumers

The “Fuel Mixin’ Mixer” was an opportunity for some of the travelers, here for the conference, to see what is happening in Los Angeles. As the late afternoon turned chilly, Jules’ son Jeremy, wearing rubber gloves and safety glasses, mixed the lye and the methanol in a large plastic jug. Jules and his other son Justin, with help from Kalib and Marie Alovert (AKA Girlmark) got the pump working. It sucked the oil from a large plastic drum into the water tank, where it could begin to heat up. The heating allows for better mixing. On a shelf nearby were several small jars of test fuel, in various shades of brown and yellow, some with a thick layer of glycerine . This is a biodegradable by-product of bio-diesel, which can be used to make industrial soap.

The water tank processor was designed by Girlmark, who works with the Berkeley Ecology Action Center. The Path to Freedom group modified and improved the design, making it more compact. One of the beauties of this do-it-yourself technology is how open it is to creativity. Once the methanol/lye mixture was made and the oil was warmed up, they were carefully combined. Let the transesterification begin! The processor stirred it slowly for about an hour. The reaction began right away and the biodiesel rose to the top. There are two more steps after this, letting the mixture settle over night, and washing the fuel.

To heat 20 gallons of oil takes a couple of hours, so the guests, numbering around fifty, munched on homemade soup and cookies while they waited. Discussion topics included the benefits and disadvantages of straight vegetable oil (SVO), fuel taxes in Britain and the US, intentional communities, and the joy of knitting. Present were members of the Boulder Biodiesel Coop, and Grassolean, another green fuels coop, who drove all the way from Colorado. Others came from the Berkely Biodiesel Coop, in the Bay area, which is, as usual, way ahead of Los Angeles in green technologies. Also present were Tom, of the informative VeggieAvenger website, and Biodiesel Betty, who’s dream is that the school buses of the future will run on biodiesel (and maybe even the vegetable oil that is left over in the school cafeterias). There were also many interested friends of Path to Freedom, some of whom knew little about biodiesel until now.

By the end there were several more converts to the beauty of home-brewed biodiesel, as well as 20 gallons of lovely golden liquid, suitable for running an old Chevy van or a fancy new Volkswagon Jetta TDI.

The same evening, a few exits south on the 110 Freeway, Northeast Neighbors for Peace and Justice screened a double feature on bio-diesel as part of their regular Friday night video/potluck at Flor y Canto. First up was the newly released “French Fries to go” by Charris Ford of Grassolean, followed by “Fat of the Land”, produced by Niki Cousino, Sarah Lewison, Julie Konop, Florence Dore, and Gina Todus, in 1996. There was a crowd of almost 40 people at the community space, including a lively group from the Bicycle Coalition. Sabrina Merlo, who helped promote the film in 1997 came with her 6 month old son. Niki Cousino, one of the builders of the Path to Freedom processor, joined the group after the screening to answer questions. She has been studying biodiesel for 10 years now, since making “Fat of the Land” and was able to share information on current issues in the green fuels movement.

“French Fries To Go” is a short, humorous introduction to biodiesel, starring Charris Ford, environmental rapper and biodiesel pioneer. He is the founder of Grassolean and dreams of starting a chain of solar powered stations around the country, “to provide alternative fuel and healthy food to the nation’s growing population of forward thinking individuals.”

“Fat of the Land” tells the story of five enterprising young women who drive their Chevy diesel van across the United States fueling their vehicle entirely with used vegetable oil procured from fast food restaurants during their trip. Their transesterification techniques were crude compared to the fumeless enclosed water heater tank, but their enthusiasm was undiminished, even by the disgusting black crusty tanks of used oil they had to scoop their ingredients out of along the way. Flor y Canto will soon have a lending library where you can borrow these and other videos on global and local issues.

The biodiesel movement in Los Angeles got a big boost this weekend. Path to Freedom hopes to host workshops and become a working model for potential home brewers in Los Angeles. The Fuel Mixin’ Mixer, and the two films at Flor y Canto showed that biodiesel can be made safely and easily in your own own backyard.. To find out more about biodiesel check out the websites below. It’s time to seriously consider the power of grease.

www.pathtofreedom.com an urban homestead in Pasadena, home brew biodiesel demonstrations
www.biodieselconsumers.org Claremont conference website
www.Veggievan.org from the author of “From the Fryer to the Fuel Tank” the definitive book on how to make your own bio-diesel
www.grassolean.com Colorado coop, makers of "French Fires to go", site includes discussion board
www.veggieavenger.org looking to “breathe green lust into the hearts of the sleeping, toxic, deluded human biomass”, many links, help in finding resources in your area
www.journeytoforever.org covers community development, appropriate technology, city farms, and biofuels
www.homepower.com info on an array of renewable energy technologies for sustainable lifestyles

HelloI was so impressed by reading this wonderful and a great summary to lead us into biodiesel history and truth.

I have a fine old diesel Benz - a stink-pot. I just want to buy biodiesel - not make it. Is there anywhere in LA that sells it?????

I know i need to mix lye with methanol and the relevent oil but in what proportions and is there any other requirement such as heating if so what temp and for how long? also any other simplified instructions would be great.
Thanks

http://www.countercurrents.org/monbiot081205.htm

By George Monbiot

08 December, 2005 The Guardian

Over the past two years I have made an uncomfortable discovery. Like most environmentalists, I have been as blind to the constraints affecting our energy supply as my opponents have been to climate change. I now realise that I have entertained a belief in magic.

In 2003, the biologist Jeffrey Dukes calculated that the fossil fuels we burn in one year were made from organic matter "containing 44 x 10 to the 18 grams of carbon, which is more than 400 times the net primary productivity of the planet's current biota."(1) In plain English, this means that every year we use four centuries' worth of plants and animals.

The idea that we can simply replace this fossil legacy - and the extraordinary power densities it gives us - with ambient energy is the stuff of science fiction. There is simply no substitute for cutting back. But substitutes are being sought everywhere. They are being promoted today at the climate talks in Montreal, by states - such as ours - which seek to avoid the hard decisions climate change demands. And at least one of them is worse than the fossil fuel burning it replaces.


The last time I drew attention to the hazards of making diesel fuel from vegetable oils, I received as much abuse as I have ever been sent by the supporters of the Iraq war. The biodiesel missionaries, I discovered, are as vociferous in their denial as the executives of Exxon. I am now prepared to admit that my previous column was wrong. But they're not going to like it. I was wrong because I underestimated the fuel's destructive impact.

Before I go any further, I should make it clear that turning used chip fat into motor fuel is a good thing. The people slithering around all day in vats of filth are perfoming a service to society. But there is enough waste cooking oil in the UK to meet one 380th of our demand for road transport fuel(2). Beyond that, the trouble begins.

When I wrote about it last year, I thought that the biggest problem caused by biodiesel was that it set up a competition for land(3). Arable land that would otherwise have been used to grow food would instead be used to grow fuel. But now I find that something even worse is happening. The biodiesel industry has accidentally invented the world's most carbon-intensive fuel.

In promoting biodiesel - as the European Union, the British and US governments and thousands of environmental campaigners do - you might imagine that you are creating a market for old chip fat, or rapeseed oil, or oil from algae grown in desert ponds. In reality you are creating a market for the most destructive crop on earth.

Last week, the chairman of Malaysia's Federal Land Development Authority announced that he was about to build a new biodiesel plant(4). His was the ninth such decision in four months. Four new refineries are being built in Peninsula Malaysia, one in Sarawak and two in Rotterdam(5). Two foreign consortia - one German, one American - are setting up rival plants in Singapore(6). All of them will be making biodiesel from the same source: oil from palm trees.

"The demand for biodiesel," the Malaysian Star reports, "will come from the European Community ... This fresh demand ... would, at the very least, take up most of Malaysia's crude palm oil inventories"(7). Why? Because it's cheaper than biodiesel made from any other crop.

In September, Friends of the Earth published a report about the impacts of palm oil production. "Between 1985 and 2000," it found, "the development of oil-palm plantations was responsible for an estimated 87 per cent of deforestation in Malaysia"(8). In Sumatra and Borneo, some 4 million hectares of forest has been converted to palm farms. Now a further 6 million hectares is scheduled for clearance in Malaysia, and 16.5m in Indonesia.

Almost all the remaining forest is at risk. Even the famous Tanjung Puting National Park in Kalimantan is being ripped apart by oil planters. The orang-utan is likely to become extinct in the wild. Sumatran rhinos, tigers, gibbons, tapirs, proboscis monkeys and thousands of other species could go the same way. Thousands of indigenous people have been evicted from their lands, and some 500 Indonesians have been tortured when they tried to resist(9). The forest fires which every so often smother the region in smog are mostly started by the palm growers. The entire region is being turned into a gigantic vegetable oil field.

Before oil palms, which are small and scrubby, are planted, vast forest trees, containing a much greater store of carbon, must be felled and burnt. Having used up the drier lands, the plantations are now moving into the swamp forests, which grow on peat. When they've cut the trees, the planters drain the ground. As the peat dries it oxidises, releasing even more carbon dioxide than the trees. In terms of its impact on both the local and global environments, palm biodiesel is more destructive than crude oil from Nigeria.

The British government understands this. In the report it published last month, when it announced that it will obey the European Union and ensure that 5.75% of our transport fuel comes from plants by 2010, it admitted that "the main environmental risks are likely to be those concerning any large expansion in biofuel feedstock production, and particularly in Brazil (for sugar cane) and South East Asia (for palm oil plantations)."(10) It suggested that the best means of dealing with the problem was to prevent environmentally destructive fuels from being imported. The government asked its consultants whether a ban would infringe world trade rules. The answer was yes: "mandatory environmental criteria ... would greatly increase the risk of international legal challenge to the policy as a whole"(11). So it dropped the idea of banning imports, and called for "some form of voluntary scheme" instead(12). Knowing that the creation of this market will lead to a massive surge in imports of palm oil, knowing that there is nothing meaningful it can do to prevent them, and knowing that they will accelarate rather than ameliorate climate change, the government has decided to go ahead anyway.

At other times it happily defies the European Union. But what the EU wants and what the government wants are the same. "It is essential that we balance the increasing demand for travel," the government's report says, "with our goals for protecting the environment"(13). Until recently, we had a policy of reducing the demand for travel. Now, though no announcement has been made, that policy has gone. Like the Tories in the early 1990s, the Labour administration seeks to accommodate demand, however high it rises. Figures obtained last week by the campaigning group Road Block show that for the widening of the M1 alone the government will pay £3.6 billion - more than it is spending on its entire climate change programme(14). Instead of attempting to reduce demand, it is trying to alter supply. It is prepared to sacrifice the South East Asian rainforests in order to be seen to do something, and to allow motorists to feel better about themselves.

All this illustrates the futility of the technofixes now being pursued in Montreal. Trying to meet a rising demand for fuel is madness, wherever the fuel might come from. The hard decisions have been avoided, and another portion of the biosphere is going up in smoke.

http://www.monbiot.com

References:

1. Jeffrey S. Dukes, 2003. Burning Buried Sunshine: Human Consumption Of

Ancient Solar Energy. Climatic Change 61: 31-44.

2. The British Association for Biofuels and Oils estimates the volume at 100,000 tonnes a year. BABFO, no date. Memorandum to the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. http://www.biodiesel.co.uk/press_release/
royal_commission_on_environmenta.htm

3. http://www.monbiot.com/archives
/2004/11/23/feeding-cars-not-people/

4. Tamimi Omar, 1st December 2005. Felda to set up largest biodiesel plant. The Edge Daily.

http://www.theedgedaily.com/cms/content.jsp?id=com.tms.
cms.article.Article_e5d7c0d9-cb73c03a-df4bfc00-d453633e

5. See e.g. Zaidi Isham Ismail, 7th November 2005. IOI to go it alone on first biodiesel plant.

http://www.btimes.com.my/Current_News/BT/
Monday/Frontpage/20051107000223/Article/; No author, 25th November 2005. GHope nine-
month profit hits RM841mil. http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?
file=/2005/11/25/business/12693859&sec=business; No author, 26th November 2005. GHope to invest RM40mil for biodiesel plant in Netherlands. http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=
/2005/11/26/business/12704187&sec=business; No author, 23rd November 2005. Malaysia IOI Eyes Green Energy Expansion in Europe. http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/33622/story.htm

6. Loh Kim Chin, 26th October 2005. Singapore to host two biodiesel plants, investments total over S$80m. Channel NewsAsia.

7. C.S. Tan, 6th October 2005. All Plantation Stocks Rally. http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=
/2005/10/6/business/12243819&sec=business

8. Friends of the Earth et al, September 2005. The Oil for Ape Scandal: how palm oil is threatening orang-utan survival. Research report. http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/reports/oil_for_ape_full.pdf

9. ibid.

10. Department for Transport, November 2005. Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO) feasibility report.

http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/dft_roads/
documents/page/dft_roads_610329-01.hcsp#P18_263

11. E4Tech, ECCM and Imperial College, London, June 2005. Feasibility Study on Certification for a Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation. Final Report.

12. Department for Transport, ibid.

13. ibid.