Biodiesel producers and activists met to brainstorm goals and implement strategies to advocate for small scale biodiesel producers. The nascent biodiesel industry is developing at both a grassroots "gearhead" scale and a large corporate level. These producers want to create a society that uses ecologically sound fuels that also isn't dominated by large agribusiness and chemical interests like ADM and Monsanto.

Another article is forthcoming.

Pitzer has an organic garden and arboretum. Read more about the Arboretum.

Maria "Mark" Alovert is prominent grassroots biodiesel activist.

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Small Producer Issues / Clarifications / What are the goals? / Local control over all aspects of production... / Tier 1 political domain...

Photo: Rudolph Diesel

It's often claimed that Rudolph Diesel originally used peanut oil in his engine. This is a myth, however, another company tested using vegetable oil as a fuel, and it was considered a success. It offered the potential for African colonies to be self-sufficient in fuel.

Making homebrew Biodiesel is a waste of time and a waste of the earth's resources.

The "energy saving" does not include the energy used to produce the sodium hydroxide, the methanol or the heat required to cook the mixture and the energy required to mix it and pump it and wash it....

Home brew Biodiesel is a cool thing to play at, but disposing of the waste products is also something that is glossed over.

If these people wanted to REALLY be "green" they would be running cars using steam power.....

As a footnote, why even bother turning vegetable oil into a fuel for your truck when you are using propane to heat your home?

What do these Biodiesel makers use to cook their food???

Use SVO and WVO in their raw state to provide a heat source, don't chemically alter them using heat and methanol and lye just so they can be used in your veggie van toy.

These people need to look at the whole picture and use the oil as suits the oil best.

RNP: you're such a nattering nabob of negativism.

It's a hobby that they want to turn into a business.

(BTW, the waste product is glycerine. It's safe and can be sold.)

The two big wins of bd seem to be that they don't release new greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, and they reduce our reliance on imported fuel.

Suppose a municipality decides to collect all the used cooking oil, and process fuel out of it to run their trucks. That's not a waste of time: that's fueling vehicles for 50 cents per gallon plus labor. That's saving restaurants a small disposal fee. If there were such a thing as a greenhouse gas emission credit, they could accumulate some credits to sell to industry.

BTW - this is in LA. People don't run their heaters as much as they drive their cars. Most of the propane tanks you see are hanging off bbq grills. (In LA, there are people who mod their cars to use CNG, and a lot of city vehicles use CNG. There's a big CNG bias in CA because of the big gas reserves, is what I'm told.)

What's cool about this grassroots movement is that it diversifies the fuel-production business, making it accessible to "regular people." If thousands of amateur fuel-makers get involved in trying their hand at designing green fuels and figure out how to make a living at it, it pressures the big energy companies to be more innovative and more green.

"Suppose a municipality decides to collect all the used cooking oil, and process fuel out of it to run their trucks. " How many gallons of used cooking oil do you think a municipality produces per say 10,000 population?

"that's fueling vehicles for 50 cents per gallon plus labor" what is the labor costs? also by the latest reckoning the METHANOL used is about 60 cents/gallon of produced B100 not counting the energy used in the conversion.

"BTW - this is in LA Most of the propane tanks you see are hanging off bbq grills" Well sunshine, what did I say in my post?????

I stated "What do these Biodiesel makers use to cook their food??? " Use WVO for heating and cooking...

"(BTW, the waste product is glycerine. It's safe and can be sold.) " Only when it is neutralised and washed and refined... at what cost??

Biodiesil production at home is diverting away from the the large scale conversion of waste to fuel. It is a hobby, a toy, a potentially hazardous and polluting toy.

However, ask ME what I do with WVO.

The amount of oil available depends on the city. Where I live (near Monterey Park), there are a lot more restaurants than in a typical community.

This waste oil needs to be used in some way, whether it's producing other chemicals or consumed or burned, so the energy used to convert it to diesel should be compared to the energy used to convert it to other uses.

Also, you can factor in that the energy is released from the oil, rather than being put into the waste stream. (And the energy is converted without an increase in greenhouse gasses.)

The glycerin waste product can be refined or not. From
http://home.earthlink.net/~galiagante/house-biofuel.html

"Once the methyl alkyl ester is extracted and washed (making it safe for use in engines), the glycerin can be sold off to chemical suppliers (if it is of sufficiently high grade). Glycerin is found in more than a thousand common household products. Low grade glycerin is of no commercial value but is readily bio-degradable and can be easily disposed of without risk to the environment."

Homebrew *is* a hobby, but, so were/are personal computers, photography, motion pictures, automobiles, ham radio, and self-publishing. Long ago, agriculture and herbal medicine were probably "hobbies."

The point of this conference was to represent potential small scale producers who sell less than 1,000,000 gallons of fuel per year. They want to take it from a hobby to a small business, and change the status quo.

(wishing he hadn't commented on this thread using the RNP handle that may bias the discussion, but for the sake of continuity here goes....)

"The amount of oil available depends on the city. Where I live (near Monterey Park), there are a lot more restaurants than in a typical community. "
GREAT! that cuts down on collection costs as the tanker only has to travel a short distance between pickups.

Now, for the rest of this posts I will not be using the word OIL to describe the contents of the large black thing with a lid that really smells in summer that you find at the back of food vendors, I will refer to it as "Raw Material"

"This waste oil needs to be used in some way, whether it's producing other chemicals or consumed or burned, so the energy used to convert it to diesel should be compared to the energy used to convert it to other uses."
The raw material, if burned, needs no processing to burn other than coarse filtering to remove metalic objects. The pumps take care of the chunks of meat, lost donuts and cleaning cloths that are in the raw material. The burners used are "cyclone" type burners where a slurry of combustable goo is ingected tangentially into a furnace which may or may not be co-fired with petrolium oil or natural gas or propane.
However the raw material must have something in it that burns! the raw material will have water in it but the higher percentage of water the higher the use of the co-firing fuel needed for the same heat/energy output.

"Also, you can factor in that the energy is released from the oil, rather than being put into the waste stream. (And the energy is converted without an increase in greenhouse gasses.) "
I think you will find that the raw material does not enter the "waste stream" that is why it is separated and not thrown in the garbage at the resturant.

You posted a good link...
http://home.earthlink.net/~galiagante/house-biofuel.html
Yes "low grade" glycerin is biodegradable SLOWLY and one of the contaminents in "homebrew" operations is methanol.

Read further down the page and you see...Of particular importance (from a production stand-point) is the type of oil(s) used. Most commercial BioDiesel vendors are using soybean oil as the primary feedstock. Exactly why isn't clear, but soybean oil is very expensive and therefore cannot be considered a good feedstock if one hopes to sell BioDiesel competitively.

Then you see...III. 2. Preparing Vegetable Oils

Waste oils need to be filtered for particulate debris. This is easily accomplished with a commercial motor oil filter. We used an electric oil pump and oil filter assembly for this after heating the oil to liquification. Immersion heaters (like those used in auto repair shops and movie theaters) do a good job at liquifying solidified vegetable oils. But even something as simple as a cheese-cloth strainer will do in a pinch. But sure to be as thorough as possible during this filtration step, repeating it necessary.
Any water retained in the waste oil must also be removed. There are two methods of effectively removing any free water that might be present. Removal of free water is critically important, as water will directly interfere with the esterification and transesterification processes we use here.
A common method is to boil off the water. This requires more energy, but less time and is accomplished by heating the oil to 105° Celsius until it stops steaming and/or no more water bubbles appear. Allow this oil to cool to under 55° Celsius before handling it (this is for your own safety).
A different method is to settle the water out. This will take more time, but uses much less energy. Settling out water from vegetable oil can be accomplished by pre-heating the oil to 60° Celsius, holding that temperature for 15 minutes, and then pouring the hot oil into a clean container to settle for 24 hours. Heat will rise and cause any retained water to precipitate out and settle on the bottom of the container. When draining off oil for processing, do not drain more than 90% of the volume oil off the top, or you may accidentally re-contaminate your oil.

Well duh!!! wonder why commercial producers of BioDiesel don't go dumpster diving.....

And now the FINALE!!!!!

"The point of this conference was to represent potential small scale producers who sell less than 1,000,000 gallons of fuel per year. They want to take it from a hobby to a small business, and change the status quo."

NO, WRONG, NOT THE POINT!!!!!!

There IS a way for ANYONE to make and sell biodiesel, you get your act together and you build a facility that meets local, state and federal guidelines and you adhere to EPA rules as regarding hazardous materials.

If you look at the aims of the "small scale producers" they wanted http://www.biodieselconsumers.org/background.htm
1. General education around issues of emissions, renewability, and sustainability (the ‘plusses’ of biodiesel, the plusses of diesel engines, and answers to the anti-diesel and pro-CNG lobbies), biodiesel industry overview, and a look at some local biodiesel success stories. We hope new educational materials not linked to the National Biodiesel Board will result from this conference; THEY ARE ANTI NBB

5. Work at the national level to remove EPA/NBB obstacles to small scale commercial production. Biodiesel is currently classified by the EPA in a manner which restricts small-scale businesses from being able to enter the market without spending millions of dollars or joining the National Biodiesel Board at great expense. There is a nationwide movement for a legal challenge to these EPA regulations, and work being done to clarify them. In order to have a legal local biodiesel production industry, this EPA roadblock must first be removed

THEY WANT METHANOL REMOVED FROM THE EPA LIST..

Actually there is loads more, like why if hombrew biodiesil makers removed the oil from the raw product outside a resturant then no recycling company would pick up the VERY low grade water, meat parts and cleaning materials produced by the outlet. That would truly end up WASTE!

So in conclusion. When you run a recycling operation you take it ALL, and you demonstrate a disposal path for all components of the waste.

No resturant grease is going to waste in California. Biodiesel is only a cheap fuel if you steal the best bits of the "raw material"

''However the raw material must have something in it that burns! the raw material will have water in it but the higher percentage of water the higher the use of the co-firing fuel needed for the same heat/energy output. Removal of free water is critically important, as water will directly interfere with the esterification and transesterification processes we use here -

-A common method is to boil off the water. This requires more energy, but less time and is accomplished by heating the oil to 105° Celsius until it stops steaming and/or no more water bubbles appear. Allow this oil to cool to under 55° Celsius before handling it (this is for your own safety).
[this is a simple design problem as the process energy is in the waste materials and several passive methods of using the exhaust heat come to mind]

"Actually there is loads more, like why if hombrew biodiesil makers removed the oil from the raw product outside a resturant then no recycling company would pick up the VERY low grade water, meat parts and cleaning materials produced by the outlet. That would truly end up WASTE!"
[maybe not if the low grade waste was now taken into the compost mass stream for agriculture production.]
: >)

this is a simple design problem as the process energy is in the waste materials and several passive methods of using the exhaust heat come to mind]

Yeah, well it didn't come to mind in that biodiesel conference did it? Did not see ONE reference on their website as to disposing of animal waste, didn't even see any proposals for disposing of the washing water either! No wonder they hate the EPA.....

[maybe not if the low grade waste was now taken into the compost mass stream for agriculture production.]

OH yeah I can see that!, "we pick up your au jus and your bacon grease and the shit you dump when you wash your fryer baskets and by the way can you please keep the lid closed on the greaster because last time we emptied it all we got was 400 gallons of rainwater, two dead cats and 43 beer cans and we compost it and sell the compost to an organic farm......"

Nope, biodiesel is awesome! Use corn to make ETHANOL which is a fuel, some of it goes to the Biodesel process which uses soy oil as a feedstock and the waste products of the corn/ethanol process and the soy/oil process are used as animal feed... ZERO WASTE.... For all you city slickers out there, the standard crop rotation where they grow corn or beans is

corn.. beans..corn.. beans..corn.. beans..corn.. beans..

By the way.... you can buy Biodiesel here in California!!!!!

From producers who don't break your very own pollutant regulations.

“Yeah, well it didn't come to mind in that biodiesel conference did it? Did not see ONE reference on their website as to disposing of animal waste, didn't even see any proposals for disposing of the washing water either! No wonder they hate the EPA.....”
[sorry I couldn't attend and make people annoyed at me]
“OH yeah I can see that!, "we pick up your au jus and your bacon grease and the shit you dump when you wash your fryer baskets and by the way can you please keep the lid closed on the greaster because last time we emptied it all we got was 400 gallons of rainwater, two dead cats and 43 beer cans and we compost it and sell the compost to an organic farm......"
[sounds like you never worked in a market where you sold materials that were only accepted by buyers who weren't blind deaf or dumb. Ever hear of casual inspection?
The 43 beer cans and dead cats wouldn't make it through the screen, the 400 gals of rainwater would be evident and customers who got burned would find another seller.]

"Ever hear of casual inspection? " Yeah! that is great!, that is how the homebrew grease stealers get away with it....

The contracted company that is contractually obliged to remove ALL the grease and greasy things from a business makes say 20 pickups a day and when the 10,000 gallons of "raw material" arrives at the facility then processed the results are lower than expected so what????

The grease detective then 3 months later goes out and using the same "coffee can nailed to a broomstick" system the grease stealers use to get "free" vegetable oil, measures the percentage of valuable (i.e. worth the time to collect it) against the amount of water in there.

If one outlet isn't playing fair by selling/letting the good stuff go then that food outlet will end up with NO grease removal service!!!!

sad but true.....

The biogrease freaks should take it all or nothing.

To "rational normal": you sound like the "nonanarchist" of ecology. You know eveything better than anyone, and you have more motivation than anyone to criticise every issue, but I dont hear much but negativity comin out of you: you dont seem to have better ideas. You might be the envirionnmentalist; they would be the pople I d still listen to.

Most people waste their time watching the ball game or in other meaninless activities while others "develop" biodiesel. Doing so , they "waste the earth's resource"? certainly not: whatever they re doing,they look for a way to to cut polution where it possible, the way they can. And they are doing it step by step. (accordin to what you say, it sound like we should keep polutin as much, except if we really are able to get rid of the 100% polution we produce). I can admit they make mistakes and maybe they ll polute while doin so; then the government should have started solving that problem a long time ago (and not only with the usual economical intersts).

Your comment discusted me as much as the "normal" US behavior towards polution. You put the problem on the back of people who are the most willing to fix it.

Start denouncing the government. Accuse the corporations who really are destroying the planet.... Dont prevent others from trying to save it: Even if they hurt the Earth more than they heal it, considering the situation, everyone understand their dedication.

at least they try

I think you will find the safe and mass production of BioDiesel is developed, and I am all for it.

What I am against is people wanting to be "small producers" without registering the product with the NBB or following EPA rules for limits of methanol vented into the atmosphere.

Check out http://www.biodiesel.org/buyingbiodiesel/distributors/default.shtm

http://www.mindfully.org/Energy/Ecology-Center-Biodiesel.htm

It is developed, and regulations are in place to make it a safe process.

Say NO to Backyard Polluters!!!!!!!

what RNP really is in support of is price support for large agri business.

and < ! > is all for doing away with EPA regulations that restrict the usage and handling of a VERY toxic and flammable chemical so that small groups of people can divert a raw material from an ESTABLISHED (rerendering) recycling industry and make a fast buck!

< ! > is all for casually dumping thousands of gallons of contaminated water into the waterways and letting others suffer the consequences so he can make money selling his "Locally produced" BioDiesel.

< ! > is all for removing the raw feedstock from the rerendering industry so he can make his BioDiesel, thus either forcing rerendering plants out of business or causing them to switch to an alternative source of fats and oils... Ummm... virgin oils??

Go for it guys, make your stuff, then CLEAN UP THE WASTE PRODUCTS.

Let us know how you get on. Please tell us what the fire department inspectors say.

You bunch of eco-terrorists!!

I thought so.
Ha ha

RNP, you have some great points, particularly about methanol de-listing, but your venom and anger are repellent. You're a hater.

I get the impression that you're out to prove something, but it's hard to tell exactly what. You are cutting down your peers (and I'm not including myself in that group), but with what are you backing it? Do you have an alternative fuel project to share with the world? Have you found the One True Religion of biofuel and can't tolerate the other sects, especially if they are more popular than yours?

----------------------

Besides, what's wrong with a bunch of hobbyists working on making fuel? It beats off-roading or shopping.

I wrote the 'biodiesel is classified by the epa' blah blah comment on the website that is quoted by the RNP wingnut. This comment on our website says NOTHING about delisting methanol , and is in fact not about homebrewers at all.

small producers= small scale commercial producers, who are running legitimate businesses and are bound by the same EPA regulations and local, state and federal regulations, as is any other biodiesel business.

The issue about the EPA, which the conference often focused on, was not at all aobut methanol, but was about whether the EPA classifies biodiesel as 'non-baseline' or 'atypical' fuel.

The website says nothing about methanol,the quote RNP quotes says nothing aobut methanol, and the conference didn't discuss homebrewing but was aobut commercial biodiesel issues and biodiesel consumer issues.

Many homebrewers happened to be present, but so was a guy who owns a 9 million gallon per year large scale commercial plant, and many more consumners of commercial fuel and smaller businesspeople involved in distributing commercial fuel. What all of them shared in common was an interest in seeing that this fuel is produced with ecological sustainability and social responsible business practices.

obviously this troll didn't read very closely when making his methanol claim (oops I mean flame).

Mark

I wrote the 'biodiesel is classified by the epa' blah blah comment on the website that is quoted by the RNP wingnut. This comment on our website says NOTHING about delisting methanol , and is in fact not about homebrewers at all.

small producers= small scale commercial producers, who are running legitimate businesses and are bound by the same EPA regulations and local, state and federal regulations, as is any other biodiesel business.

The issue about the EPA, which the conference often focused on, was not at all aobut methanol, but was about whether the EPA classifies biodiesel as 'non-baseline' or 'atypical' fuel.

The website says nothing about methanol,the quote RNP quotes says nothing aobut methanol, and the conference didn't discuss homebrewing but was aobut commercial biodiesel issues and biodiesel consumer issues.

Many homebrewers happened to be present, but so was a guy who owns a 9 million gallon per year large scale commercial plant, and many more consumners of commercial fuel and smaller businesspeople involved in distributing commercial fuel. What all of them shared in common was an interest in seeing that this fuel is produced with ecological sustainability and social responsible business practices.

obviously this troll didn't read very closely when making his methanol claim (oops I mean flame).

Mark

if you can get a better fuel product out there for cheaper than oil, good luck.

we have 'only' 1 trillion+ barrels of oil left worldwide, so take your time.

per the top photo, I refuse to allow some dreadlocked hippie wigger wearing a checked orange shirt to block companies that know what they're doing because he's anti-biz-nass.