Moving to vegwerks.wordpress.com

Thanks for reading folks.

We tried out a few blog sites when the Vegwerks Blog started, and we've decided to stick with vegwerks.wordpress.com.

We'll see you there!

Biodiesel at the Renewable Energy Fair - Aug 9th Anchorage

The Renewable Energy Alaska Project is putting on their 3rd Annual Renewable Energy Fair Saturday August 9th, 11am-9pm at the Anchorage Parkstrip.

We will have a number of diesel vehicles running vegoil-SVO conversions for folks to check out, and will have a FREE introductory biodiesel and SVO seminar at 3pm. We've still got some spaces if you greasy drivers want to show off your rigs.

The fair itself is a great collection of renewable professionals and proponents from across the state, mixed in with great green vendors, scrumptious food and rocking tunes.

Daniel Lerch from the Post-Carbon Institute is the 5:15pm keynote speaker. "Daniel manages the Post Carbon Cities program, providing resources and assistance to local governments on peak oil and climate change. He is the author of Post Carbon Cities: Planning for Energy and Climate Uncertainty, the first major municipal guidebook on peak oil and global warming."

A big thank you goes out to the Knik Group Sierra Club for sponsoring our Alaska Biodiesel and SVO Network booth.

For those of you looking to make a day of it, other workshops include:

Noon:
Deborah Williams, The Role of Renewable Energy in Addressing Global Warming
Peter Crimp, Wood Energy in Alaska – Renewed Interest in an Old Standby
Marvin Kuentzel and RJ Vasser, Renewable Energy System Design Basics

1 pm:
Robin Richardson, Just One More Reason to Watch What We Eat… The Amazing Relationship Between Food and Energy
Steve Gilbert, Fire Island Wind Update
Eric Yould, Hydropower in Alaska

2 pm:
Mike Willmon, Electric Vehicle Technology
Maryellen Oman and Cynthia Wentworth, Commuter Rail… It’s Time Has Come
David Lockard, Alaska’s Near-term Geothermal Development Prospects

3 pm:
Will Taygan, Backyard Biodiesel
Andy Baker, Solar Hot Water for Homeowners and Businesses
Chris Rose, Renewable Energy Policy in Alaska: Successes and Challenges

4 pm:
Bill Leighty, Brining Alaska’s Large, Diverse, Stranded Renewables to Alaska and Global Markets as Hydrogen and Ammonia with Firming Storage
Larry Flowers, Wind Energy: an Alaskan Opportunity
Doug Johnson, Overview of Tidal and In-Stream Hydrokinetic Projects in Alaska

Veg On!

Biodiesel Homebrew Guide: The Definitive DIY Manual.

Biodiesel Homebrew Guide by Maria "Girl Mark" Alovert: everything you need to know to make quality alternative diesel fuel out of waste restaurant fryer oil.

This is the book that I used years ago to learn how to brew biodiesel and build my reactor. It's currently up to edition 10.5, revised in 2007. There's no fluff here, no personal stories or politics, just the information you need to make your own biodiesel.

Girl Mark is one of the best known and well respected activists in the homebrew biodiesel community. She is famous for traversing the country leading workshops for the masses. She is the inventor of the water-heater based weldless-fumeless Appleseed processor and is a DIY expert on many internet forums.

Her book was written as a companion to her classes and it reads in a very comfortable, conversational tone. After a quick overview of biodiesel versus other veg-fuels; she jumps right into what to expect when using biodiesel, the good and the bad - in a friendly, but honest way.

With an eye for keeping it cheap and accessible to DIY folks, she emphasizes alternatives to expensive scales and chemicals, while still being safe. Biodiesel Homebrew Guide then leads you through test batches, titration, dewatering techniques, brewing fuel and quality testing.

The coolest thing about this book is its focus on chemistry for non-chemists. Yes, there's a quick explanation of what's going on in your reaction, but where the Biodiesel Homebrew Guide really shines is explaining what the reaction should look like, what it shouldn't look like, and how to test and fix substandard reactions. She explains and describes emulsions - ways to break them, and ways NOT to break them. The book tells you which popular DIY tests work, which ones aren't worth doing - and explains WHY. The book even goes into detail about the little white clumps that occasionally show up, and the creamy middle layer that we sometimes see.

Biodiesel Homebrew guide covers water-washing options, goes into depth about the pros and cons of each technique, and gives recommendations about which mist nozzles work best. It also includes a really cool section on acidulating and purifying glycerol, as what comes out of the processor is only about 40% glycerine - in a cocktail of methanol, soap and catalyst.

Finally Girl Mark provides a number of plans for building a basic or a bell-and-whistles Appleseed processor and stand-pipe wash tank.

Like other homebrew books it does not go into methanol recovery or acid-base reactions, but it does point you in the right direction - if that's where you are headed.

Biodiesel Homebrew Guide is definitely a work in progress, perhaps more like a 'zine than a book. It came as a stapled together pile of photocopies and contains a number of spelling and grammatical errors. There are also a few places where it seems that some paragraphs had been updated, but others referred to older editions of the book.

It's not a slick shiny book, but it is the DEFINITIVE guide for the thrifty do-it-yourself crowd. If you want to understand what's going on in your processor, and how to make quality fuel, then this is the book for you.

It's the perfect complement to b100supply's Home Brew Biodiesel - which has clearer plans and recipes, but doesn't go into as much depth about what you're seeing happen during the reaction.

You can buy Biodiesel Homebrew Guide for $18 (including shipping to Alaska) directly from Girl Mark at localb100.com/book.html

Veg On!

Alaska Fish Oil Biodiesel Grant Reopened

The Alaska Energy Authority (AEA) $180,000 grant I wrote about in 13 million gallons of Alaska Fish Oil has finally been reopened.

More info at the State of Alaska's Public Notice.

Here's some excerpts from the grant's introduction:

The Alaska seafood industry processes approximately 4.4 billion pounds of fish annually, producing approximately 2.2 billion pounds of “waste,” those portions of the fish not processed for human or industrial consumption. Of that waste, approximately 62 percent is discharged into state waters. The discharged fish waste contains an estimated 13 million gallons of unrecovered fish oil.

Besides its use in pharmaceuticals and agriculture/aquaculture feeds, Alaska fish oil has been demonstrated as a suitable supplementary or displacement fuel in applications burning diesel as a thermal fuel (in boilers or heaters) and, in some circumstances, as an engine fuel. Alaska fishoil has also been demonstrated as excellent feedstock oil for the production of biodiesel (methyl esters).

A major hurdle hindering further oil recovery from Alaska-generated fish processing wastes is that the waste is generated at numerous geographically dispersed sites over relatively short periods of time in following harvesting practices of wild stocks. This tends to discourage investment in and the economic viability of fixed location oil recovery facilities, the most common model. Further, fish waste is generally not amenable to aggregation and transport as it is bulky, difficult to handle, and degrades rapidly unless frozen or otherwise preserved.

The intent of this project is to provide grant funding and technical/business support toward the development, construction, and demonstrated operation of a mobile fish oil recovery module. This module will be employed at and relocated between multiple existing processing sites thereby increasing its annual utilization and economic return. It is expected that at some processing sites, the fish oil product will be retained and utilized by the host facility and/or community to displace the use of conventional diesel engine or boiler fuels.

Need more info about the application? Contact the grant manager, James Jensen at (907) 771-3000.

Veg On!

Vegwerks in the Anchorage Daily News.

Rindy White from the Anchorage Daily News part together a great write-up on the Hands-On Homebrewing class I taught in Palmer last weekend. Page A4 of the Sunday paper no less!

Alaskans learn how to make their own fuel.

BIODIESEL: It's not easy, but the result is a $2 a gallon alternative.

PALMER -- Two bucks a gallon to make your own biodiesel sounds like a bargain compared to $5 to pump a gallon of gas or heating oil. But operating a processing plant in your garage might be more of a hobby than you're willing to take on.

I was also interviewed for the pickup truck story at the top of the front page of today's Sunday ADN. Check out the "ECO TRUCKS" part at the end:

Alaska's love affair with pickups sours.

The emails are already pouring in for another class, and the comments are piling up at the ADN website.

So here's some information for those FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:

Check out the events page at www.AlaskaBiodiesel.org/events for upcoming classes.

I also offer private classes for groups of 5 or more. Email will@alaskabiodiesel.org to set one up.

See these blog entries for more information on: sustainable Alaska biodiesel, Alaska grown fuel, Alaskan fish oil biodiesel and Alaska's place in the food vs. fuel debate.

Read more about straight vegetable oil (SVO) conversions at www.AlaskaVegoil.org - using heat to thin the oil instead of removing the glycerin.

And of course you can join in the discussion at the Alaska Biodiesel and SVO yahoogroups email list.

Veg On!

Hands-On Brewing Cheat Sheet

Thanks to everyone who came out to the Hands-On Brewing class last weekend in Palmer. The class was full, and there was a lot of stuff to go over. In a room full of beakers and graduated cylinders a new crop of biodiesel brewers tested Salmon oil, Mill and Feed's oil, and my personal supply of cherry-picked deep-fryer Canola oil. The layout of the room made the board hard to see, so I've put together the basic directions here for folks to remember:

Always wear safety equipment. Don't breath or touch this stuff. Biodiesel is nontoxic after you've washed the methanol and glycerine/lye out, not before.

For the reference solution:

1. add 1000ml distilled water
2. add 1 gram NaOH or KOH

For the titration:

1. add 10 ml isopropyl alcohol
2. add 4 drops phenolphthalein indicator solution
3. "blank" the jar with a few drops -OH reference solution - swirl and add until the purple stays
4. add 1 ml oil (be exact)
5. measure 10 ml -OH reference solution - swirl and add until the purple stays.
6. note how many ml -OH reference solution you used.

This will be the grams (Na or K)-OH added on top of the catalyst amount to strip the free fatty acids.

For the test batch:

1. warm your oil to 135 degrees F. (methanol boils at 148F - don't overheat!)
2. add 220ml methanol to methanol/catalyst jar
3. add the catalyst - 5 grams NaOH or 8 grams KOH plus the stripping grams from the titration - to the methanol.
4. swirl the methanol/catalyst mixture until it dissolves.
5. add 1000ml warm oil to a 2 liter soda bottle.
6. add methanol/catalyst solution to the soda bottle.
7. shake for one minute, then shake one minute every 15 minutes for an hour.

For more detailed information check out http://www.biodieselcommunity.org

Alaska Suppliers of Biodiesel Chemicals.

• 50# Bags NaOH, KOH - Garness Industrial, Anchorage 907-562-2933
• 55 Gallon Drum Methanol - Inlet Petroleum, Anchorage 907-274-3835
• 2# NaOH (Roebic Crystal Drain Opener) - Lowe's
• 1# KOH - Arctic Vegwerks, Chugiak 907-688-5288
• 12 oz. Methanol (HEET - yellow bottle)
• Phenolphthalein Indicator - Arctic Vegwerks, Chugiak 907-688-5288

The homebrewer of biodiesel quickly discovers that you can't HazMat ship small quantities of chemicals to Alaska. It's lower 48 only.

The big chemical supplier in Anchorage is Univar. Unfortunately they DON'T want to deal with individuals, wholesale to businesses only. Furthermore, they told me on the phone that they don't want to sell to backyard brewers of biodiesel, even if they have a business license. What's more, they asked me if I had a fuel distributor license (which I do) and where my biodiesel facility was. I explained that I teach classes and seminars, including courses at UAA and APU, and they would "check" if they could sell to me. Ugh.

Next call was to Garness Industrial 907-562-2933, who resell chemicals to individuals and were great to deal with. Their single 50 pound bag price for NaOH and KOH was cheaper than the single bag price from Univar.

Garness prices June 16, 2008:

50# NaOH $57.50
50# KOH $107.00

Inlet Petroleum 907-274-3835, is a major petroleum distributor down at the Port of Anchorage. Their current price for a 55 gallon drum of methanol is $335.36, 10% more than Univar's single drum price, but they sell to individuals.

For SMALLER QUANTITIES of chemicals your options are limited.

Lowe's sells 2 pounds of pure NaOH branded as "Roebic (Heavy Duty) Crystal Drain Opener" for $8.68. The Tudor store was sold out, so I went to Wasilla to pick some up.

For those looking for Phenolphthalein Indicator solution, Arctic Vegwerks 907-688-5288 (yes, that's us) sells 30ml dropper bottles for $10. We also sell one pound bags of KOH for $10, 3 pounds for $20.

Small quantities of Methanol are sold as HEET in the YELLOW BOTTLE as most gas stations and grocery stores (I get mine at Fred Meyer).

Veg On!

Salmon Biodiesel at Oceans Festival June 7th Anchorage

Come down to the Anchorage Parkstrip Saturday Afternoon for the Alaska Oceans Festival and visit the Alaska Biodiesel and SVO Network booth. We'll be sharing space with our non-profit sponsor, the Alaska Chapter Sierra Club.

Salmon oil biodiesel demonstrations will be offered every hour or so throughout the afternoon, but be sure to stick around for the evening beers and music.

Son Volt is playing a free show 7:30pm, with Fairbanks jam-Americana band Sweating Honey opening at 6pm. The 4pm keynote speaker is Alexandra Cousteau, granddaughter of legendary explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau.

As a side note, we're in need of clear 2-liter soda bottles (with caps) for upcoming biodiesel events. If you have a few please drop them off at the booth!

Veg On!

Hands-On Biodiesel Brewing Class - June 14, 2008 - Palmer

Saturday June 14, 2008 - 12:30pm

$39 at the APU Kellogg Campus, Spring Creek Farm, Palmer

Please join Arctic Vegwerks for an afternoon hands-on biodiesel brewing class and make your own fuel! Participants will learn how to collect oil, test it, and create a small batch of biodiesel to take home. Registration is required, and the course fee includes all safety equipment, lab supplies and ingredients for a test batch.

Hands-On Biodiesel Brewing is the second in a series of biodiesel and vegoil events and classes this summer. New students are welcome. See the events page at www.AlaskaBiodiesel.org for more information.

Spring Creek Farm is located at 6404 N. Lossing Rd in Palmer, Alaska.

From Anchorage take the Glenn Hwy past Palmer and turn LEFT on Farm Loop Road, after few driveways turn RIGHT at the Spring Creek Farm sign onto Lossing Road. Continue to the white farm buildings on your right.

Sponsored by Arctic Vegwerks in cooperation with Alaska Pacific University.

Click here for registration information (132k pdf). Call Will Taygan at 907-688-5288 for more information.

Book Review: Do It Yourself Guide to Biodiesel

Reading the "Do It Yourself Guide to Biodiesel" by Guy Purcella was like having a long conversation with someone who is very knowledgeable about biodiesel, but on a different page.

Purcella sells a plastic-cone based biodiesel processor and obviously believes in safe, quality homebrew made in his design. Thankfully the book isn't a 230 page advertisement, but it does go to lengths to describe why the plastic cone-processor is a good idea.

Personally, I am opposed to mixing heated flammable chemicals in plastic.

He also strongly encourages folks to buy a pre-made processor or at least a kit. Now, the kit and DIY resources he recommends - Utah Biodiesel Supply, the Infopop Biodiesel-SVO forums and the Collaborative Biodiesel Tutorial are the same ones I point folks too, so I'm not sure where our paths diverged.

This may be the book for you if you want to buy a processor and have it "just work." Which, interestingly is the conversation I've been having recently with a few local folks.

Purcella goes into great detail describing everything except building a processor: the standard personal story, why petroleum is bad and biodiesel is good, oil collection, storage and titration, and quality testing homebrew, as well as storing, filtering and pumping the final product.

It's got a lot of information. Perhaps a little too dense for those just interested in biodiesel, but good for folks who are thinking about buying a pre-built reactor. This is probably the only book that lists a "buyers guide" to pre-built systems, and really lays out the big picture of what's required beyond the processor.

Of course, for those hardcore DIY types, my favorite book for actually building a processor is Home Brew Biodiesel from b100supply.

Veg On!

I adore biodieselSMARTER

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!

37 degrees and light.

Yep, May 1st marks the start of the outdoor biodiesel brewing season. It's also the day we're supposed to take the studs off the tires, but since there was a big snowstorm the last few days of April the state is letting us keep them on until May 15th.

There's little bit of snow on the shady side of the house, and a few of the big dumb mosquitoes flying around. Thankfully their tiny, fast and numerous cousins haven't hatched yet.

It's only 37 degrees out, but I pulled the clear frying oil cubies out of their cardboard boxes and let them sit in the sun all day. They flowed smoothly out of the boxes and through the paint strainer into my 55 gallon drum. Although the little harbor freight clear water pump was a little slow moving the oil from the drum to the appleseed. This year's new addition is a refrigerator compressor that pulls some suction to prime the pump. That priming feature is a very, very nice addition.

I've got the first 2008 batch drying in an open top drum with a bubbler in it, but I don't know how much drying it will do in the wet, heavy, almost-freezing air.

I'm also just about out of the few hundred gallons of SVO (Straight Vegetable Oil) that I filtered for 2-tank SVO driving all winter. It's time to get busy!

Oh yeah, today I sent my $1.72 in taxes to the state for my April SVO use. I'll have to have a talk with my representative about personal-use exemptions. He lives a couple miles down the road, and Alaska is very familiar with subsistence and personal use issues.

All this and I'm working by the twilight at 11:00 pm.

Yep, May in Alaska.

Veg On!

Backyard Biodiesel Basics Class - May 14, 2008 - Palmer

Wednesday May 14, 2008 - 7pm

FREE at the APU Kellogg Campus, Spring Creek Farm, Palmer

Please join us for an evening lecture and demonstration. We will cover both biodiesel brewing and straight-vegetable-oil conversions. Seating is limited, so arrive early to guarantee your spot.

Backyard Biodiesel Basics is the first in a series of biodiesel and vegoil events and classes this summer. See the events page at AlaskaBiodiesel.org for more information.

This seminar is based on the biodiesel program offered at the Bioneers conference. Those folks who attended the session at Bioneers are encouraged to sign-up for the second class in this series, offered June 14th, where participants will be making their own batches of biodiesel.

Spring Creek Farm is located at 6404 N. Lossing Rd in Palmer, Alaska. From Anchorage take the Glenn Hwy past Palmer and turn LEFT on Farm Loop Road, after few driveways turn RIGHT at the Spring Creek Farm sign onto Lossing Road. Continue to the white farm buildings on your right.

Sponsored by Arctic Vegwerks and the Alaska Biodiesel and SVO Network, in cooperation with Alaska Pacific University.

Call Will Taygan at 907-688-5288 for more information.

Earth Day biodiesel and SVO on AK radio.

AK radio ran a nice 5 minute segment on Alaskans burning vegoil and biodiesel during their Earth Day program. You can download the entire 04/19/2008 program from the archives at akradio.org.

Here's the summary for the show:

April 22nd is Earth Day, and on this week's AK, we'll pay tribute to the planet. We'll learn about sustainable agriculture, and visit a hotel that runs on the same stuff you use to cook your French fries. Plus, recycling old Crocs, and figuring out which plastic bottles are safe, and which ones might land you in hot water. It's all on AK from the Alaska Public Radio Network.

If you're looking for just the biodiesel segment, a low-quality (32k mp3) version is available here.

Veg On!

Book Review: Home Brew Biodiesel - a fabulous DIY manual.

B100supply has put out Home Brew Biodiesel, a unique and extremely helpful guide to brewing your own biodiesel. It reads a lot like a lab manual or a build-it-yourself guide: lots of pictures, lots of detail, lists of tools and supplies needed to build and operate a water-heater based biodiesel setup.

The Appleseed processor plans, wash tank plans, misting set-ups, overflow systems, basic electric control panels and more fill the first half of the guide. The second half provides step-by-step instructions to operating your new processor, and the appendices cover quality testing procedures, a few intermediate-level processing methods and waste stream management techniques.

Much of this information is free on the internet, but B100supply has done a wonderful job of wading through the crap to bring you the gems.

Most DIY biodiesel books spend a whole lot of time telling personal stories and explaining why petroleum is bad and how biodiesel is going to save the world and our pocketbook. Home Brew Biodiesel skips all the fluff and tells you how to build a processor, make your fuel, and test it for quality.

It's remarkable that the book not only covers collecting and testing oil, but goes into such processing details as how long to heat, how long to mix, and how to test if your batch is done. With the wide range of opinions on the internet, it's nice to have an authoritative guide to start you on your way.

This book does not go into acid-base reactions or methanol recovery, but even advanced brewers will find some of the testing techniques, waste stream treatments and wiring setups interesting.

Unfortunately for Alaskans, B100supply usually ships by UPS, which makes even little parts quite expensive. But they do offer their Home Brew Biodiesel book through cafepress, where the shipping is a reasonable five bucks.

It's definitely the best guide I've read for actually building a processor.

Veg On!

Biofuels [kind of] Blamed in Food Crisis

The Anchorage Daily News ran a New York Times article at the top of the Nation and World section today that the ADN retitled "Biofuels blamed in food crisis."

Other than the inflammatory title, the article itself is pretty good. It admits that biofuels - especially corn-based ethanol - does have an impact, but that it is "relatively small and that energy costs and soaring demand for meat in developing countries have had a bigger impact."

The article goes on to report that "grocery prices in the United States increased about 5 percent over the last year."

A decade ago we were lamenting that family farms were failing because of low crop prices. The soybean growers had a market for their meal, but the oil was terribly undervalued. They went ahead and formed the National Biodiesel Board to create a market for their soybean oil. It looks like they succeeded.

That being said, it's easy to take a good idea and implement it poorly. The giant Three Gorges Dam in China is a terrible example of hydropower. Altamont Pass in California was built in the middle of a raptor migration route, giving a wind power a bird-killing reputation that has been hard for it to shed.

There's no way we can grow ourselves out of our fossil fuel addiction. Biofuels, however, can be a sustainable part of our future energy mix.

Capturing waste fryer oil and oil from discarded fish carcasses could provide over 13 million gallons of biodiesel in Alaska every year. Combine this with the Canola production potential of the old barley farms in Delta, and we will have a significant impact on our local energy needs - sustainably - and without completing with global food supplies.

P.S. If you want more insight on the food vs. fuel arguments check out Clayton's post over at gas2.org.

Dr. Diesel and Peanut Oil - Myth or Legend?

Ah yes, Rudolph Diesel's 1893 compression-ignition "diesel" engine was invented to run on peanut oil, so it's okay to burn old fryer grease in our diesels, right?

I've seen this peanut oil story published in books and spread widely across the internet. Unfortunately, the real history isn't as clear as all that.

Gerhard Knothe, one of the USDA's top biodiesel researchers, found passages in "Chemical Abstracts" 6:1984(1912) and 7:1605(1913) in which Dr. Diesel writes:

at the Paris exhibition in 1900 there was shown by the Otto Company a small diesel engine, which, at the request of the French government, ran on Arachide (earth-nut or pea-nut) oil, and worked so smoothly that only very few people were aware of it. The engine was constructed for using mineral oil and was then worked on vegetable oil without any alterations being made.

So yes, a early unmodified diesel engine did run on peanut oil, but it wasn't Dr. Diesel's first engine.

Veg On!

Grease Price Conspiracies.

With diesel prices going up, there's been a lot of interest from folks trying to save a buck with our Straight Vegetable Oil (SVO) systems. Amazingly, Anchorage has a SVO-friendly grease collection company, Alaska Mill and Feed. They have been selling SVO drivers 55 gallon drums of filtered, dewatered, used (sometimes heavily used) cooking oil, known on the commodities market as "Yellow Grease."

It's been priced at 75 cents a gallon for a few years, but recently they raised the price to $1.00 a gallon. I've heard rumblings in the local vegoil community that maybe Mill and Feed is just trying to squeeze us a little, since diesel prices are so high. This couldn't be further from the truth.

A quick check at the USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service's Bioenergy Portal leads us to the National Weekly Ag Energy Round-up. Yellow Grease is commanding an amazing 33 cents a pound on the open market.

Since Yellow Grease runs about 7.6 pounds per gallon, at 33 cents a pound, the market rate is just over $2.50 a gallon! Those 35 pound (about 4.5 gallon) cubies of old fryer oil are now worth $11.55, double what grease was selling for a year ago!

Even with shipping costs to the lower 48, Mill and Feed is losing money by selling grease at the low local price. Mark, the plant manager, has done a great job cleaning up their oil and keeping costs low for Alaskans. We're lucky to have such a great business supporting Alaska biofuels.

Alaska Biodiesel Night a Success!

Wow, we had over 100 people turn out to yesterday's Alaska Biodiesel Night. Folks flew in from all over the state, and many of key biofuel folks were in the audience to help answer the tricky questions:

Hans Geier, the Delta Canola famer has solved the problems that growing Canola in Alaska has been faced with in the past, and spoke about his farm-scale oil press.

James Jensen from the Alaska Energy Authority updated us on fish-oil projects, specifically mentioning their use of antioxidants for fuel preservation, the portable rendering plant grant, and studies to determine the benefits to the environment by capturing the oil from carcasses instead of dumping them.

A fisherman (Brian Pauling, I think?) from Dillingham asked about shelf-life and stability of fish guts/oil/biodiesel, as they are trying to get a fish oil energy project off the ground.

Tim Hudson was there to testify about the National Park Service's successes with B100, and specifically mentioned using heated fuel systems to keep B100 driving down to -38F.

And many other folks brought up great points, from "secret diesel" recipes and unheated blending proposals, to biodiesel efforts on prop airplanes.

Anthony Destafano from SEAKsolutions, flew up from Juneau and gave a great presentation on Southeast Alaska's renewable energy potential. He focused on the fact that biodiesel can help now, and doesn't require the years of studies and infrastructure requirements that plague many renewable energy projects.

I tried to focus on the the title of the evening. "Biodiesel: What is it? Why is it so great? How can I get it?" We covered chemistry, ASTM specs, emissions, carbon and energy balances, lubrication and oxygenation benefits to the engine, and of course, how to obtain biodiesel. Basically, with the new Ultra-Low Sulfur Diesel (ULSD), you need some kind of additive to protect your engine - biodiesel is an excellent one, and B20 blends will run in unmodified diesel engines.

We at Arctic Vegwerks are working with the biofuels community and are expecting to sell ASTM biodiesel this summer, while hoping that local producers are up and running within a year. More on this later.

Furthermore, Arctic Vegwerks is offering a series of classes and seminars on backyard biodiesel this summer. More on this soon.

The evening ended with a great networking session in the foyer, Zane Ulin and crew from Premium Biofuels Alaska were handing out flyers on the BioPro, building off of Anthony Destefano's fleet-scale biodiesel project in Taku that he mention in his talk. Folks from UAA were handing out questionnaires for yet another biodiesel feasibility study, and Mark Goodman from Mill and Feed told me about the skyrocketing market for yellow grease. More on grease prices soon.

Thanks to the folks from "French Fries to Go" and "Greasy Rider" for the films, to all the great people who made this happen, especially Judy Stoll who helped staff the table at the last minute, and a big cheer to the Sierra Club for sponsoring the evening. We'll do it again.

biodieselSMARTER: a 'zine for brewers.

One of the hardest things about backyard biodiesel is wading through all the crap on the internet and finding the good information. To make things harder, backyard brewing techniques are constantly evolving. What was cutting edge two years ago may have been put aside as too problematic (like the Magnesol dry-wash - it's difficult to filter out), and today's new techniques still have kinks (like the Purolite dry-wash - preventing resin compaction). There is the solid peer-reviewed biodiesel community website that will give you everything you need to get started for free, but when entering more advanced homebrew issues (acid pre-treatment, methanol recovery, GL 1-day drywash) we're at the mercy of the mob at the infopop forums.

Enter biodieselSMARTER, a DIY full-color 'zine "for biodiesel homebrewers by biodiesel homebrewers." Now in its second year, it's only $10 for a subscription and it's jam-packed with real stories about real folks doing real homebrew. Issue #5 is a full 40 pages, and its homebrew roots show with the 100% recycled paper, 100% wind-power, folded 8.5 by 11" format.

It's based around case-studies, and the only fault I find with it is that a couple of times it shares cool things that folks are doing, but doesn't give enough detail to reproduce what is happening (the living filter for wash water.) Most of the time however, the information is great (ethanol treatment for methanol exposure, sizing a purolite resin column, and Dr. Dan's TDI death row analysis.) I especially like Spanking Ester, the question and answers column from Leif at Piedmont Biofuels: 5% prewash chemistry, efforts to scale up the GL 1-day method, anti-gels for biodiesel, etc. etc.

But don't take my word for it, check out what Kumar and Lyle have written, and then send in your $10!

P.S. I just got my #3 and #4 back issues. Full-sized and beautiful. I now remember why I didn't subscribe last year: the old ad-free version was $25 a year. The new, smaller version has a few ads, but it's a measly $10 for a great 'zine. Every biodiesel brewer should have a subscription.