All the information you need to home-brew biodiesel is floating somewhere out there on the internet. It's finding the right information with the angle you want that's difficult.Issue number 6 of biodieselSMARTER showed up in my mailbox yesterday and I couldn't put it down. First of all, it's written by folks with sustainability in mind. The full-page ad inside the front cover reads "The greenest car you own? Mass transit. Try not to drive at all. Icebergs will float in your honor... Respect the Biodiesel." Nice.
In addition to the regular columns, this edition includes glycerin composting trials and horror stories of illegal glycerin dumping. There are articles on desert thriving moringa and snow-planted camelina as feedstock crops. Also in the mix are a couple of farm-scale case studies, a bicycle-powered reactor built by high school students, and a piece on PrairieFire Biofuels, which serves both the SVO and biodiesel scene in Madison, Wisconsin.
The camelina article is especially pertinent for us Alaskans. In fact, Hans Geier - the Delta Canola biodiesel farmer - sent me a small packet of camelina for a little test plot I've got going in the orchard. Much to my chagrin, Hans and some other local farmers have been really keen on blending unheated oils with diesel and/or other thinners. Interestingly, these Albertan farmers are doing exactly that, with locally grown and crushed off-spec canola. Although in general I'm not a proponent of blending, I'm glad to see biodieselSMARTER embracing the larger sustainable biodiesel-vegoil community.
Don't have a subscription yet? It's a little 'zine, but filled with quality information, and it's only TEN BUCKS for a year-long subscription.
Veg On!
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