I've run a couple of long threads here called 'blogs and other bio-diaries' and 'blogs and Bio-diaries 2'.
They attempted to collect people's online 'weblogs' and diaries, or offtopic sorts of personal stories about biodiesel, in one place.

Overview of biodiesel blogs:

Our most prolific blogfather is Lyle Estill of the educational co-op Piedmont Biofuels. Many of the (well-written) blogs in the above threads come from him and I post his writing here all the time. The original is at www.biofuels.coop/blog . I try and make it clear when I'm quoting Lyle rather than posting my own diary, but I understand that it's easy to miss and that sometimes peopel think it's me writing (I wish I could write that well!). Oh well.

Kumar Plocher has a page over at Livejournal blogs- www.livejournal.com/~ybiofuels . Check the comments section, Spike Lewis of the Biodiesel Council of California occasionally has interesting stuff to say there too and is an interesting biodiesel activist.

I've also posted stuff from San Ley who posts technical stuff here quite a bit: www.flexistentialist.org

I also just discovered that there's a biodiesel-related blog by Forrest who participates in the forums here and at biodieselnow: http://truffula.net/~johnnybuck

I occasionally post stuff here that I've found on lists also, from people who dont' usually write a diary or weblog.

I finally got around to acquiring a 'real' blog (ie a wordpress page at www.girlmark/com/blog) but haven't been using it since I installed it. I'll be moving all my stuff from the blogs and biodiaries thread over there soon and putting them in chronological order (some of them are posted not in the order when they were written). Stay tuned.

I want to encourage the rest of you to write about your systems and other bidiesel experiences here as well. I think it's useful to hear about peopel's everyday experiences with their biodiesel learning curve and all that, whether you want to keep a regular habit of writing or not, keep us updated on what your biodiesel life is about once in a while. That's what this thread is for!

Mark

This message has been edited. Last edited by: girl mark,

written by Forrest, from his blog here:
http://truffula.net/~johnnybuck/archives/000036.shtml

December 02, 2004
Migratory biodiesel education

In a few weeks, I'll be packing as much of my life as I can fit into my truck, and rolling across the country to take an internship at Piedmont Biofuels in North Carolina.

"Piedmont Biofuels is a cooperative run agriculture operation with strong interest in sustainable practices and renewable energy. Our farm consists of a three acre market garden and oilseed crop research. The farm also maintains a small flock of dairy/meat goats in addition to free-range chickens.

A main portion of our operation is a biodiesel research refinery. We currently produce biodiesel for our farm's diesel tractor from waste vegetable oil. Piedmont Biofuels is also researching bioregionally-sound oil producing crops for on-farm energy production."

I actually won't be going straight to NC, instead I'll be hightailing it first to Ft Lauderdale Florida. There is an outfit here that I am paying to drop a new engine into my pickup and make sure it all works properly (somthing a little out of my mechanical skill set). Oh, did I mention it's a diesel engine? Will then finally have as far as I can figure one of the rarest types of vehicles in the USA, somthing that hasn't been sold since 1987. A small diesel 4x4 pickup.

Then I'll drive up to Pittsboro in NC to live on the farm/refinery and work on biodiesel seems like day in and out. Another interesting tidbit, my new roomie is from Guatemala. Living in the south with someone from Central America will make an interesting cultural experience I think.
Posted by JohnnyBuck at December 2, 2004 03:29

Forrest also posted a video of the Piedmont Biofuels farm and facility. I'ts linked from this page here. For all of you who've been enduring my crossposting of Lyle's work for the past year or so, Forrest captured the visuals to go along with it:
http://truffula.net/~johnnybuck/archives/000042.shtml

Something he wrote about a year ago apparently:
from here: http://truffula.net/~johnnybuck/archives/000013.shtml
January 30, 2004
Odd things that happen when you drive a mercedes

I was at the grocery and goodwill the other day, when I came back to my car there was a guy hanging out that wanted to chat. He aparently saw my "Powered by Biodiesel" bumper sticker and wanted to ask me if I make it (which I don't yet), but I told him where around here he could buy it. Then he asked about the price, and when I told him he apeared kinda floored, and no longer looked interested at all. Hell I'm still floored by nearly $3.00 a gallon when #2 petrol diesel is around $1.65, but I'm making a choice based on morality and my sense of smell that I feel is worth the cost. We talked about cost and maintenance, he showed me how to fix my sagging bumper and some other things. Somewhere along the way he mentioned somthing about mercedes meet -ups. He said he had been to one in Yreka last year, and they got together to hang out with other mercedes owners, talk mercedes, go on drives, etc. I'm standing there nodding thinking... go on drives? Not carpools to get to a destination, but just puttering around with 7 other mercedes behind you.

The point of this little story is that I've been noticing more and more (I ran into another mercedes W123 owner in the desert as well), that there seems to be 2 reasons that people own mercedes lately, and those two groups are little alike.

Group one, are the people that bought these cars off the lot 20+ years ago, and are still driving them, or the people that wish they could have bought these cars off the lot 20+ years ago want the style attributed with driving a mercedes. The guy I met in the desert said that they drive like a $30,000 car and seemed really pleased with that. Fact of the matter is the last car I had cost a lot less than $30,000 and had a smoother ride, faster acceleration and better traction than the mercedes.

Group two, are the people who bought an old mercedes because they found out about biodiesel, plain and simple. I know more than a few activists who have them, it's not just me. Most of this group could care less as far as image is concerned if it's a mercedes or a somthing else (there are some exceptions). Speaking for myself at least, I got a mercedes because it was more affordable than a volkswagon TDI, more mechanicaly reliable than the 20 year old volkswagon/toyota/mazda/datsun and gets better gas milage than a ford/chevy/dodge truck. I could give a **** that it's a mercedes.
Posted by JohnnyBuck at January 30, 2004 01:28 PM

and a few months later he posted this:

September 20, 2004
Driving on gasoline again
http://truffula.net/~johnnybuck/archives/000020.shtml

It's very strange to be going to gas stations again. For one year now (give or take a couple weeks), I've been using 100% biodiesel to power my car, except when it's not available. However, I needed a truck for work, and I drive up to 400 miles a month on crappy dirt roads which is hell on a mercedes, but not so bad on a nissan 4x4 pickup. I feel like a dirty traitor, having managed to convert most of my family to driving biodiesel vehicles, and then jumping ship back to fossil fuels. Sitting in line at the gas station behind excursions, h2s and shiney unused pickups with Bush/Cheney stickers is a frightening reality check that I've been really disconnected from for the past year.

However... I've found a place that specializes in putting diesel engines into light pickups and suvs. Downside, it's in Florida. Upside, I'm planning going to Florida anyhow. Next year my plan is to do the Willing Workers On Organic Farms program for most of the year. I want to learn farming skills, and see different parts of the country up close, perhaps find a place I'd like to live someday. I was going to start my trip in Florida because it has really different climate, crops and work seasons than up north. Then I can work my way back to the west coast over the course of the year.

On another note, I'm now living at 7,300 feet in the Sierra Nevada of California, quite a seasonal change from 2,100 feet in Southern Oregon. I'm 2 hours from the nearest cellphone coverage for my network, we've got a funky dialup connection (between 200 ms and 50,000 ms ping times), and I work all day. Doesn't leave much room for other things i do. I guess it happens with most folks, there is simply a time when you need to take a break from being an activist so you can make enough money to pay bills and make cool projects happen. It'd be great if it wasn't neccesary though.
Posted by JohnnyBuck at September 20, 2004 08:20 PM

and he posted some nice words about my homebrewing book (which is how I found outhis blog):

January 21, 2005
Biodiesel Primers
http://truffula.net/~johnnybuck/archives/000043.shtml (click on the original for all the links to the primers)

Upon cursory inspection, this document from the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service is probably the best "biodiesel 101" document that I have seen. It's presented in a clean, professional manner, info looks accurate, etc, it's also free (as in gratis).

While not presented in such a snazzily laid out manner, the better resource in my opinion though is girl Mark's Biodiesel Homebrew Guide. I never purchased a copy as my logic was always "$15, come on that info is all available on the internet...". Sure, I guess it is, mostly. If you look really hard. I've since changed my mind on the value of this book since there are a couple copies around the refinery. It totally rocks. This has much more info than the NCAT document above (perhaps this is "biodiesel 102"?), including basic water heater processor designs, parts lists, and discussions of quick and dirty tailgate oil tests, and what to do with your glycerine sidestream. If you're really interested in biodiesel, you'll want this book (though the NCAT document might be the better thing to show someone who has never heard of biodiesel before).

Oh look, Lyle just posted anohter one:

January 25, 2005
Out of Fuel Again
from http://www.biofuels.coop/blog/archives/000164.html#more


Three days before the Grassroots Conference this town is electric. Registrations have passed the sixty five person mark, with more and more pouring in.

The General Store is scrambling to figure out the menu. Tami is scrambling to get designs and folders in place. Shipments are arriving. Arlo is practicing People Get Ready on the piano. Rachel’s inbox is overflowing, and Leif is teaching a three day course on biodiesel up at NC State.

Poor Forrest is on phone duty. He is in the control center, emailing messages, and asking questions with regularity. There are a group of film makers coming, apparently Tami wants to see a documentary of this conference.

I walked up to the front five, where the Dodge has been quietly sitting, filled with gelled B100. This was a nice warm day. Dead battery. I walked over to the refinery and bummed a ride into town with Pedro, who was running an analytics errand.

I fired up the Silver Ghost and took it to the refinery. There I found Rachel under the hood of the tank truck. She was stripping electrical wires with single minded devotion to her task: get the pig started and start delivering fuel.

We have been backed up on fuel delivery. Cold weather, electrical problems, dead batteries, the works. And it means we have kept customers waiting.

I headed back to work on the Dodge when Rachel called. “This truck wants to move some fuel,” she said. I shot back over to the refinery, and jumped in. We careened through the country back roads of North Carolina, accidentally cutting off pickup trucks with confederate flags, executing rolling stops in search of the right gear, and rolling about.

We had pumped off around 1125 gallons of fuel when the tanker sputtered to a crawl. Fuel filter again. We pulled into a nearby chicken farm and swapped it out. What we really need to do is replace the tank truck’s rusty old fuel tank. We were thankful when it fired back up, and I sailed into Pittsboro just in time for Rachel’s appointment.

Tami had run off to yoga, and Janice was minding the kids, and I pulled in exhausted. Absolutely spent. It was a big fuel day. And the sad part is that we cannot even begin to claim that “everybody’s full.”

Our immersion heater for the Tami Tank has not yet arrived, which means its usual weekly volume has shrunk during these cold weeks. Orders for fuel have been coming in with conference registrations, which means we will empty the beast right before boarding a train to NBB.

by Lyle Estill

Elsewhere in the biodiesel blogosphere, Kumar is running a 'worst biodiesel article' contest, and having some fun (questionable?) at the expense of a really poorly written article that describes biodiesel as soy oil mixed with diesel:
http://www.livejournal.com/~ybiofuels/37124.html

Mark

Back on the East Coast
(this one's actually by me)



It’s the middle of the night at Lyle and Tami’s Home For Wayward Biodiesel Junkies here in North Carolina after the first night of the Grassroots Biodiesel Conference. I’m wide awake and will be useless tomorrow at the conference. The house is full of people from the Blue Ridge Biofuels co-op (the Asheville boys) filling all the spare beds. I commandeered the living room couch and the woodstove and shooed the other visitors into the official guest rooms so I could take over the living room, knowing I"d be up half the night with insomnia after sleeping half the day today on the drive down here from DC. Just tried to chill out by doing some light reading of a 1996 study on biodiesel contaminants, and tried to wrap my mind around quality issues I’ve heard about/experienced this year. Trying to figure out what I"m going to say in the ‘quality in the biodiesel industry’ talk that I got drafted to give at the last minute. Oh yeah, that’s scheduled for first thing in the morning, too. ugh. morning.

I’ve been trying to figure out if I"m going to the Florida NBB convention or heading home after this NC event. I’ve been excruciatingly sick with autoimmune illness issues since about mid-december, and I"m a freakin’ wreck at the moment. If I dont’ go to Florida I’ll probably really regret it for the rest of the year, and if I go, I’ll be screwed up for a couple of weeks, which I can’t afford to do since I"ve got some major work planned in another part of the state when I get back. Tonight I was already surfing the airline ticket websites trying to figure out if I could afford to go home early instead of on Wednesday. That’s pathetic- here I am on the East Coast, should be taking advantage of the amazing blessings that come with being able to step on a plane and fly out to the other side of the continent and ‘Poof! you’re 3000 miles away!’. I’m surrounded by people whom I like and whom I don’t get to see much, and really want to spend time chatting with (back home I’m not a major conversationalist and I’m really sick of talking about biodiesel in person, believe it or not, so me WANTING to talk to all these peopel out here about it is a pretty big deal). For me, this conference is almost like a mini-Appleseed Tour-reunion. But all my body wants to do is go home early and sleep. waaahhhhh!!!!!!!

It’s been an interesting last few weeks.

I almost didnt’ come out here at all because I’ve been too sick to work, for the most part, for a month and a half. I’ve had a serious argument with my immune system for a few years- I had Lyme Disease, the tickborne thing, about 5 years ago, and about three or four years ago I developed what seems like chronic Lyme or fibromyalgia or one of the other autoimmune complications that Lyme sometimes sets off. I went through a huge battery of blood tests a few years ago, to no avail- I never got it officially diagnosed beyond A. learning that I did in fact have some sort of overactive immune system signs, and B. reading enough about Lyme and chronic autoimmune disorders to learn that there’s not a whole lot that western medicine, at least in the US, has to offer (and that there are hundreds of quack schools of thought about how to deal with it, which I dont’ feel qualified enough to evaluate. Every form of non-conventional medicine in this country seems to want to claim that it’s discovered the cure for poorly-understood autoimmune illness issues)

I was actually doing pretty well from last spring to about mid-december. Tour was difficult and I had a few weeks where intermittently I’d get serious bouts of fatigue and need to pull over and sleep in the middle of some of the long drives, but I more or less pulled it off despite all that. It could have been better, it could have been worse. Tour was one of the most important (or at least the most visible) things I’d done in my life, so I was pretty happy to do it even in my slightly- gimpy state.

I almost wrote a blog entry in mid-december about how I really seemed to be doing better, and then, as if to spite me, another bout of ye old fatigue and brainfog came around almost as soon as I had that thought about how great I was doing. So in the past month I"ve been pretty much unable to work construction, and mostly unable to do focused brain work either. This is just about the worst time for this to happen- right before this trip, and all the money-making that it’d require to get out to these conferences, and I can’t work all of a sudden and needed to sleep 12 hours a day. I’ve had a piece of writing to edit for two months and it’s driving me nuts that I can’t get it together to do a good job of saying what I need to in the assigned number of words. It’s pretty scary not having either resource available- brain or brawn.

So mid-january, I looked at my finances and decided that I wasn’t going to the conferences and it felt like a great relief to stop struggling to make it happen. I posted an announcement on the lists about trying to sell my train ticket between the two events. Instead of someone buying the thing off my hands, a couple of my penpals from the lists started up an impromptou fundraising campaign to get me out here. I’m really grateful for this and it made it possible for me to get here, but I’m still in a bind about Florida and the NBB convention and whether I can even deal with a few days of that one. Hopefully I’ll be semi-awake enough to have coherent conversations tomorrow! but I don’t think I can even deal with the trip to Florida now.

Someone else responded to the fundraising by offering me some consulting work in DC in getting a large-scale offroad fuel user into their own on-site production. In-house production for fleets and possibly farmers is something I"m really interested in developing, and I think I"ve got a solid grasp on the technology to make it happen up to a certain scale. I’ve been dying to implement a farm sized system for a while now. I went out to DC a couple of days ago, and immediately realized that this user was biting off more than they could chew- at the scale they wanted to work, they couldnt’ economically do their own oil collections, and of course had been looking at buying yellow grease from the renderer, which immediately eats up something like $1.20 a gallon even before methanol, labor, and energy costs.

There are some ways in which homebrewing doesn’t ’scale up’ (but peopel tend to hear the numbers as they apply to homebrewing, not commercial production). Yellow grease, at least the cheap version, actually brings some of those issues about quickly (ie high water content, high ffa compared to what homebrewers are used to handling, which instigates a round of filtering/dewatering and acid-base pretreatment steps that we often avoid with the nice oil we handle regularly).

It also turned out that they were interested in in-house production because they wanted to save money over diesel costs. The numbers looked do-able to them on paper because of their massive monthly fuel usage- a few cents’ savings can really add up- but the economics are still really marginal if you’re competing against $1.80 a gallon offroad diesel. If something were to go wrong with the feedstock and the process, the economics didn’ look so favorable anymore.

This is kind of where I think the common argument about how small producers should target the offroad diesel market instead of dealing with EPA registration for legal on-road fuel sales sort of falls apart. Big earthmoving companies like this one, or other construction, farming, and mining operations, are directly depending on turning diesel energy into money, and there’s no room for a profit margin for commercial biodiesel there. In-house production holds some promise for the smaller ones, or for farms that produce some oil-bearing crop. It’s a puzzle I"d like to work on for a while, especially the farm-use side of it, since the heavy diesel use on farms probably ties in somewhere with health issues like the ones I"m having.

I hadn’t realized that saving money was the only motivation for this place to use biodiesel- I was talking to them through another person, and I misread the info I did get. I incorrectly thought I was coming out here to deal with a big organic farm that had environmental motivations in doing this (they have ‘organics’ as part of their name), which wasn’t the case at all, and, although I think that saving money is a very valid motivation for homebrewing, it’s tougher to make it fit into a business plan when the company’s constantly comparing the economics to those of offroad diesel and has no other reasoning behind the decision. I know we occasionally run into fleets/bulk users who want to produce their own in-house fuel because they’re still working off the homebrew ‘50 cents a gallon’ myth. arggh. In their case, that wasn’t quite true- at least I wasn’t the one to break the news to them about how its not really 50 cents a gallon. They’d already studied that issue- and at least they’re still interested in pursuing it, with a pretty good-sized chunk of money ready to throw at the whole proposition. I talked their homebrew enthusiast into starting really slow with a small homebrew setup onsite and to answer all the outstanding questions about what he was capable of doing with that feedstock, before trying to work that into the tight economics of the business on a large scale. He’ll be trying to talk the renderer out of a few barrels of yellow grease to start with for tests (the renderer didn’t respond well to their request for ‘ two tankerloads’ either- that was somehow too small too). The homebrewer is going to be on salary to get started with these smallscale experiments, which also seems like a good move on the company’s part.

We ran down to North Carolina today, we were in a rental car (my ride’s real ‘ride’ was all gelled up in the DC cold snap) and I wasn’t on the rental agreement/insurance, so I couldn’t drive. As a result I slept for the entire trip (now I"m paying for it with being awake at the wrong hours)… As we rolled onto 15/501 on the way down to Pittsboro, I was enjoying the smell of the winter breeze and had a little moment of nostalgia for North Carolina- I’d lived here for years, in a variety of dilapidated farmhouses. I felt a round of homesickness for NC and felt this brief rush of what I can only describe as ‘homecoming’.. There was bluegrass on the radio station and some lights twinkled in the distance out of an old farmhouse… and a moment later we passed the modern NC reality, an ugly housing development with some ridiculous theme as it’s ‘ye olde’ gimmick, and the spell broke as I thought about how much that great farmland isn’t economical to actually farm anymore, and is getting snapped up by developers if it happens to be anywhere near a road like this one. I still gotta say despite all that I feel a heart-aching love for this place that I’ve never experienced about California.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: girl mark,

oh yeah, the conference.

We got there after the keynote and the pre-keynote addresses. The keynote was from a gentleman from the state energy office, and Lyle was attempting to impress him with the robustness of the B100 movement in the state.

Lyle also apparently did a pre-keynote speech. the biodiesel fashion police report that unlike anyone else in the room, he was wearing a tophat. After seeing that, I felt much less anxiety about being inappropriately dressed for showing up at a conference in all black Carhartts.

In July Rachel told me that Lyle was ‘the black hole of press’ - ie when their group gets press attention the press tends to talk to Lyle (or so she said, I dunno. there've been some pretty photogenic newspaper photos of Leif and Rachel pumping fuel). Sure enough, Lyle was in a top hat delivering a speech. It’s at his blog here (also below) . Anyhow, we got there during the ‘what is the grassroots biodiesel movement?’ discussion, which was a huge go-around of introductions, with a bunch of peopel talking aobut their fairly interesting projects. One of the James Madison University peopel was there, folks from the Clean Cities Coalition were there talking about their B20 usage, there were all sorts of users and co-ops and even a random and kind of free-energy-ish inventor who’d just found out about this gathering. The go-around was the format that Nick (of ‘SVO to Mexico’) once dubbed ‘biodiesel and what it means to me’- usually the point at which I skip out if possible. But this was a pretty impressive bunch of people- a good geographic spread was represented, much of the Eastern Seaboard from New Hampshire on down to Florida, and folks from Seattle, Colorado, and St Louis, and elsewhere. There were peopel I knew from a whole bunch of the lists, too, everything from Wastewatts to the VW Diesel Parts forum. Made for some interesting conversation afterwards- like we’re talking in two different dimensions, the present and the virtual.

There was an 85 person turnout in a room that seats 100, and we swamped and overwhelmed the General Store restaurant afterwards for the social. Pretty good going. We’ve nominated New Hampshire to host the next one of these, by the way, whether they know it or not. but not in the middle of winter, please.

conference go-around

anyway, they videoed the whole thing so hopefully it’ll be edited into somethign or another one of these years, here’s a photo of the go-around:

January 28, 2005
from Lyle's blog:

(as in, Lyle's speech where he was introducing the real keynote speaker yesterday: )

Tonight is the Keynote address of our Grassroots Biodiesel Conference. I plan to do some singing on stage as I introduce Larry Shirley:

People get ready, there’s a train a coming….

Sorry. I’m not supposed to be singing tonight, but it’s hard not to sing when you see a crowd like this gathered from all over in the name of biodiesel. Thanks for coming.

Our guest speaker tonight is Larry Shirley. He runs our State Energy Office, which means he is a technocrat. Larry Shirley is part of the “Renewables Establishment.”
He has been in the renewable energy wars for decades, and has been fighting for renewable BTUs since before most of us had ever heard of biodiesel.

I know that tonight the room is full anarchists, and angry raw food vegans, and people who have invested considerable energy righting the injustices of the establishment.

Which is why I wanted to get Larry here tonight. He is the genuine article. When you are waiting at the curb for him to arrive, and wondering what type of vehicle he’ll be driving, it won’t be an SUV, like everyone else. It’ll be a hybrid.

When you go to his office for a meeting, you’ll notice all of his employees turn the lights off when they leave the room. And bring your own coffee mug, by the way, since there is no Styrofoam provided. Larry Shirley walks the walk, he’s a marvelous speaker, and his office contributes both money, and brainpower to biodiesel efforts in North Carolina.

We are delighted to have him here tonight:

And after Larry has finished, I plan to launch into a discussion of What is the Grassroots Biodiesel Movement:

I got an email from Joe Jobe the other day. He’s the Executive Director of the National Biodiesel Board.

He has been following this conference from afar—he said he wished he could be joining us on the train ride to Florida—and he was reflecting on some of the issues that have arisen between NBB and grassroots activists in the past.

The last time a bunch of grassroots activists showed up at the annual NBB convention, they were wearing some laser printed stickers that said B100. And they were pushing for increased fuel quality. And they wanted NBB to open source their human health effects data. And they wanted a voice for small producers.

And NBB responded. They put together a small producer’s working group. And they came out with a small producer’s membership that was half price. By the way, eight small producers have joined the NBB since they passed that membership category in July.

And they tabled discussions of quality policing until another time.

From their perspective, they listened to what the grassroots community had to say, and instead of getting a “Thank you,” they were vilified for their failure to pass quality regulations.


Something you have to realize is that the NBB has a devil of a time speaking for its members. It’s members are diverse, with their own agendas, and their own axes to grind, and some of them would no doubt love to live in a world in which there was no grassroots agitation.

And something the NBB has to know about us: no one speaks for our membership. We are diverse, with our own agendas, and our own axes to grind. And some of us would love to live in a world in which we could sell fuel, unfettered by the NBB.


The reality is that NBB has to put up with us. And we benefit from the existence of the NBB. We are strange bedfellows, but we are in bed just the same.

I would love to give you some perky, upbeat message about how great it would be if we could all just get along. But it’s not that simple. Let me read a dark passage from Kumar’s blog, Fueled for Thought:

On one side, there are giant petroleum/chemical/ag corps that produce poor quality fuel consistently, and have created a national lobby that exclusively focuses on incentives, repeatedly quashing attempts at real understanding of sustainability and quality control.

On the other side, we have a sea of enthusiastic progressives, 99% of whom are unaware of the ramifications of small-scale production, legal, safety, environmental, and otherwise.


Sure, Kumar is over simplifying the position of both sides, but in doing so he makes the point succinctly.

We don’t need to agree with the NBB. Those in the room who share enthusiasms for both Linux and biodiesel will probably never agree with the NBB’s basic value proposition that derives from access to proprietary data. But you know what? I argued that point with Joe Jobe in Palm Springs and he listened. Genuinely listened.

We can be critical without being hostile. We can be appreciative when things go our way. And though we may not have one voice that speaks for us, we do not need biodiesel to deteriorate into factions. The NBB knows we are here. They know we are the ones in the classrooms. They know we evangelize the fuel. They may have members that think we are impossible to approach or deal with, but as an organization, they are ready to talk and to listen to our ideas.


What is the Grassroots Biodiesel Movement? You’re looking at it. It’s in this room tonight. We are in the backyard, and we are in buckets, and we are the ones driving around on this fuel. We write the blogs, and we live on the lists, and we know our biodiesel. One of my blog readers once wrote: ““Let them tear the ears off your favorite dog before you succumb to the tortures of biodiesel registration.” That may sound a little extreme, but you know what? It girded Piedmont Biofuels at a critical moment and helped us move to the next level. The Grassroots Biodiesel Movement is supportive. Supportive of one another, and of the fuel.


And having said that, I’d like to open this up to a general discussion. What do you think the grassroots biodiesel movement is?


Posted by Lyle at January 28, 2005 06:05 PM

I'll post more interesting stuff about the event a bit later, but here is a bit about how it was organized. Please note that in my post I say nothing about 'anarchists and angry raw food vegans' like Lyle persists in seeing at these events (which I think is wrong). In the photo above, I see a bunch of grey heads, and relatively nondescript people, who have jobs like 'farmer' and 'contractor', and whose interests in biodiesel alingn nicely with their conservative, liberal, and libertarian politics... Unfortunately posing the biodiesel movement as this culturally polarized 'b100 hippies versus corn-fed farmers' thing makes for better storytelling, so journalist types like Lyle tend to make comments like that no matter what the reality is. Sounds like he's off telling Wired magazine the same thing right now. Damn.


conference logistics fun
(yet another post by me, not me quoting anyone else)

I think that I actually did OK for being completely sleep-deprived on the main day of the conference. It was just such an awesome event. A few comments on the conference organizing, since I think we'll be having more of these events in the future:

The Piedmonts organized their event with no 'biodiesel 101' introductory session, nor with an introductory 'track'. So I got stuck in the quality session on Saturday morning with a wide mix of people- both beginners who barely knew anything aobut biodiesel, and folks who were already involved in the industry.

We'd done a big go-around on Friday night in the opening session, and I'd learned that many of the folks present were local farmers/contractors/small business owners who wanted to make their own fuel, or to learn the basics, and some of them were there to look at the possibilities of growing fuel crops. Many of these folks were in my session. So I took the easy route and dragged everybody through a “Contaminants 101” rather than going into BQ-9000 and Certified: Biodiesel Driven and industry quality control issues.

My session was probably a waste of time for a few people but it seemed like a conference like this needs the '101' level stuff addressed, and the next people to organize a conference should keep this in mind. Lyle said that they'd organized it this way because the folks from their co-op were bored with all the '101' level stuff that we included in last year's conference, but unfortunately I think that we actually had MORE beginners in this year's event than last year's, and that it was more necessary than at the California event.

Another constructive criticism I'd give, is that we should really hold these as two-day events. It's VERY hard to see where a 101-level series of workshops could have fit into the schedule of the Piedmont conference, other than maybe replacing some of the 'go-around' from the first day with a 101-level class, or an optional 101-level class, or something. Maybe a basics 'track' could have been run. I don't know.

Another criticism I have is that there was no 'basic' handout on biodiesel. Last year for the California biodiesel consumers conference, I got permission from Dr. Jon Van Gerpen to do a handout of his 26-page online course, and my impression is that he would give that permission to anybody who needs it for such an event. Since many of the folks present were farmers who were probably not huge “internet biodiesel research' junkies, it seems imperative to make sure everyone'd have the basics available on paper.

Unrelated to this particular conference, I think we need to write a set of B100-centric “biodiesel 101” literature for the US/Canada, that doesn't come from the NBB or existing internet resources. There's somewhat of a move afoot to accomplish just that very thing through the Biodiesel Council of California and some cronies of ours. We could do it at B100.org, in a way similar to the Homebrew Collaborative Tutorial project at localb100.com/forum. Stay tuned- I gotta get some help from Sam in organizing the B100.org forum to include the email-to-forum software, but we should have it launched in a week or two when everybody is still jazzed about biodiesel after the conventions.

Lyle at the NBB convention, writes:

January 31, 2005
Day One of NBB 2005
in Lyle's blog about this here topic:

There are a thousand people at this year’s National Biodiesel Board Conference. My guess is that they expected around 750.

Which is why the line to get a beer at last night’s reception was so long that it was over before the beers were served. Many went without lunch today. The place is crushed, and while there is plenty of grumbling, who cares? The more the merrier…

I missed the most of the morning’s general session (train lag I suppose), and got there just in time to see Charris and Daryl Hannah knock out a rap tune, and to see Daryl give Neil Young and award on behalf of the NBB for his use of biodiesel.

Once again Daryl took free reign at the microphone, and (apart from wearing one of our B100 Community buttons on stage), gave backyarders everywhere a plug, mentioned the B100 community, and told the audience of soy producers to avoid gmo monocropping! It was remarkable. An inspiration.

She almost made it to our grassroots conference, but ended up bypassing Pittsboro.

By all accounts the first session of the Technical Track, which was Biodiesel Fleet Experience and OEMs was a monumental waste of time. Apparently there were no engine manufacturers present and everyone I met who attended was disappointed.

I went on the Policy/Regulations Track to an Update on National and State Legislation, and it was fantastic. Scott Hughes, the Regulatory director of the NBB was very good, and it provided me with some vocabulary that I have been lacking.

All of my efforts at shaping the legislative landscape in North Carolina have been on the “Demand side,” that is to say a tax holiday for the fuel. And yet our state’s renewables establishment crowd does all of its work on the supply side—things like tax credits for petroleum blenders etc. Realizing this was exceedingly helpful.

Last night at a poolside reception, Anne Tazewell agreed to take a run at NCDOT with me, to see if we can get them to drop their opposition to my tax holiday idea. And today in the hallway, Tobin Fried, our Clean Cities Coordinator objected when I referred to North Carolina as a “biofuels backwater.”

I came out of the morning session and did an interview with Wired magazine. They had twigged into the differences between the “corn and milk fed” crowd and the grassroots folks at the conference. I suppose if they run the URL in the story, Blast can stand by for some visitor traffic.

In the afternoon I jumped into the Users Track to attend a session on Quality. It too was fantastic. George Kopittke, of Griffin Industries kicked it off with a wonderful description of quality as being that which is “fit for purpose.” He went into the technical differences between a Bic pen and Cross pen, and likened it all back to biodiesel. I was impressed by that. The last time I spoke to George was at the Iowa State Biodiesel Workshop, and the interchange went something like this:

“Griffin Industries! I’ve been in some of your dumpsters!”
His curt response was “We press charges.”

There was a flash of tension in the quality session when some guy from the U.S. Postal Service complained about some off-spec “homemade fuel” he had bought. When we straightened him out, so that it was clear he could not possibly have been buying from a home brewer, but rather from an NBB member, it was a little touchy.

I felt that Gene Gebolys from World Energy stole the stage in terms of the quality discussions, but then again, we buy from World Energy, so I am pre-disposed in his favor. He made the point that biodiesel is not a product, but a service, and that our customers expect flawless performance from us every time.

Piedmont Biofuels has seven people at this conference, so we are blanketing every simultaneous session. Tonight we are doing a sync up over at the marina.

As I trudged home in late afternoon, I met Tami, Melissa, and the boys, climbing out of a cab in swimsuits with skim boards, and all of the accruements of the beach. I had spent the fantastic Florida day in an over-cooled, daylightless convention center and was extremely jealous.

Posted by Lyle at January 31, 2005 04:45 PM

Forrest writes this in his blog at www.truffula.net/~johhnybuck:

January 31, 2005
Contrasting the Conferences

I thought I'd take some time during a presentation at the NBB conference to contrast this conference with the Grassroots Biodiesel Conference.

The first thing you may note is, I'm bored enough DURING the conference here in Florida that I'm not only willing, but excited to do anything but listen to the suits, and watch their power points. By and large, no one here seems to actually know a whole lot about biodiesel. I'm willing to wager that I have more first hand experience with biodiesel use and it's effects than most people in this room. Dry, uninspired and conservative. The postal service spoke about how they ran some of their vehicles on B20, and that they noticed no difference between it and regular diesel. The man stated that he was simply interested in meeting the NEPA regulations, and expressed no actual interest in biodiesel and it's benefits (either politically or environmentally). Homebrewers are like anarchists, be afraid. Bottled water, pepsi and suits.

In comparison, the Grassroots Biodiesel Conference was fantastic. Everyone who came was excited, engaged, personable, and often had noticeable biodiesel stains on their clothes. Panels had interesting questions, and discussion involving the whole room. We had people collaboratively planning educational tools and websites, speculation about algae and even yeast as oil sources and quality control discussions. We could also fill up with biodiesel right outside from the Piedmont Biodiesel tanker. Powerpoint files were sparse, and used a propriately, instead of in place of presenting skill. Local organic carrots, fruit and carhartts.

I'm guessing Lyle will have more to say in a more eloquent manner on both of these topics, and I will be importing and posting video of the presentations at the grassroots conference as soon as I get back to North Carolina this weekend.
Posted by JohnnyBuck at 08:11 PM

More of my own unending conference reportback from the Piedmont event...

I caught parts of a few sessions at the conference, but didn't quite have the attention span to deal with an in-depth discussion for the most part. There was an amazing emissions presentation by Michal Vojtisek-lom (www.buffalobiodiesel.com). Not only did he do a great presentation on diesel engines and diesel emissions in general, something that I think we need better literacy about within the biodiesel enthusiast community- but he'd also done a number of onboard, on-road emissions tests, including on SVO. The SVO had performed really well. If I remember right he was somewhat advocating (maybe just on a theoretical basis) driving SVO for longer distances and highway trips, and using biodiesel for short trips, due to data from his emissions tests. The tests were done in conjunction with Greasecar, so perhaps some of the data is on their site?

Recently Tom Judd from Boulder Biodiesel had posted something about wanting to buy emissions testing equipment and to pay for a round of testing to answer some of the questions about SVO once and for all. He was concerned about non-regulated emissions- the questions about aldehydes and formaldehydes and acrolein and all that kind of questionable stuff. Michal didn't have those answers, but his presentation covered a lot of important questions about the regulated emissions, and got me thinking about whether it was possible to just build some of the emissions testing gear ourselves. Surely within my community of electronics nerds, the skills must exist.


The conference had really good representation from a bunch of biodiesel co-ops. The Asheville co-op, Blue Ridge Biofuels, is trying to approach the issue from the 'legitimate' small producer/legal distributor angle. Their plan is to try and produce fuel for their town's biodiesel needs- in compliance with all local, state, and federal regulations blah blah blah. I”m not sure this has been done successfully by a co-op before. Most of our groups have talked that line but never got out of the 100 gallon batch once a week sort of range.

They've got a building, have an intermediate sized homebrew-style system, and they've been fundraising for both the equipment and the salaries to go 'the rest of the way' with making it safe and legitimate in the eyes of their regulatory agencies, (and joining the NBB as one of the new small producer associate membership members). You guys better keep the rest of us in the loop on what you find yourselves dealing with in terms of permitting for your small plant. If I remember right, they're currently mired in the fun and joy of proving to their county that biodiesel handling shouldnt be ruled by the stringent laws that govern gasoline distribution. That's one of those situations that should be a no-brainer (ie biodiesel isn't flammable on it's own) but fire marshalls and other regulatory agencies don't like to make exceptions for rules on the books. Fuel is fuel, the thinking goes, what's non-flammable fuel? Of course this county is quite nervous about fuel now after this autumn's hurricane-induced floods, which caused quite a few huge diesel spills in the flood zone).

Colorado's CU Biodiesel group was there en masse, there were folks from Madison WI, Seattle, up and down Virginia and North Carolina, one of the James Madison University staff came out in support, lots of DC area people, a lot of Buffalo NY people, a couple of the local Clean Cities Coalition B20 people, a number of wants-to-be Clean Cities folks from other areas. The St Louis Biodiesel Club drove 12 hours on clouding-over homebrew that almost bogged their Mercedes down over the icy WV mountains. We had lots of farmers and locals who want to support a better farm economy in NC (which has been in recent years decimated by the collapse of the tobacco industry here, and several men and women spoke eloquently to this issue and their hopes that biofuels oilcrop production could help the local farm economy). There were quite a few students from elsewhere, a few teachers, and a couple of vocal homeschooling parents. Tons of homebrewers and people who wanted to be homebrewers. Libertarians, conservatives, liberals, former liberals, and Bill Levitt and son. There were a few different folks whose businesses run heavy equipment, who were looking into biodiesel as an alternative. Many people came with SVO experience, good and bad. The list goes on and on.

We had a great work session with the Collaborative Biodiesel Tutorial workgroup- Maud Essen officiated, with Sam Ley and me for support. The Tutorial is a project a few of us have been working on for the last few weeks- a group-written, open-source 'how-to' project about homebrewing. The work so far has been online. This time we opened up the floor to 15-20 newbies and asked them detailed questions about what they like or dont like about existing Web biodiesel tools, and got some awesome and sometimes surprising responses. Some of them knew little about biodiesel but they had well-formed ideas on how they would like it presented in a Web tool. Some of them, Maud included, worked professionally in jobs that involved creating trainings, tutorials/presentations, and there were a number of computer geeks present, so there was a relatively high level of technical discussion on how to proceed. Graydon Blair's simple graphics laying out the biodiesel process got rave reviews. My favorite technical term that we learned, was what one of the corporate trainer guys called “USA Today Graphics”. Lots of people had bought my book at the event, so I got some feedback on how I presented info- people found even my extremely crappy cartoons helpful- so everybody making a website, listen up, the people want cartoon outlines of their process. More sketches, less words.

There was a lot of discussion about Eric H's “biodiesel-o-matic” spreadsheet tool that we have online at the localb100 forum, and suggestoins for other interactive tutorial tools that we can adapt to biodiesel homebrewing education. Again, stay tuned. The details and the project are at www.localb100.com/forum. I”m happy to report (not that anyone cares) that no one accosted me to ask about my motivation this time around, or asked me to tell them stories, with the exception of a really weird newbie SVO guy who went on and on, really excitedly, about something to the effect of “I know, I figured it out- you're called Girl Mark because there was already someone else named Mark you knew, and you had to distinguish- did I get it right? Right??”. I managed to almost completely avoid talking about "Biodiesel and What It Means To Me" this weekend. Got to talk emissions instead. Success.


Mark

Here's one from Sam Ley's blog about the same thing as I covered:

Sunday, January 30, 2005
Safe Returns
from Sam at http://www.flexistentialist.org/archives/2005/01/30/safe_returns.shtml

Yesterday we arrived back in St. Louis from the Grassroots Biodiesel Conference. The drive was long, but the conference was worth it. Extra big thanks to Rachel, Leif and Lyle (man of 1,000 hats) of Piedmont Biofuels for all the work they did organizing the great event. It was attended by upwards of 100 people from around the world, all doing very interesting work on the ground floor of the biodiesel movement.

There was a gentleman from the Czech Republic who studies vehicle emissions not by putting the vehicle in a lab, but by installing a lab on the vehicle, testing its real world performance and emissions. There were researchers working on strains of algae for oil production that would grow in the desert. There were members of a University of Colorado program creating teaching materials for K-12 students on the topic of alternative fuels. The audience was diverse and far reaching, and everyone had come to meet others, and learn more.

I met quite a few amazing people, and a few valuable contacts. We also got a lot of work done. Maud, Girl Mark and I facilitated a discussion session about our Collaborative Biodiesel Tutorial project we are developing. It hopes to be a complete guide to learning about, and developing skills for using and making biodiesel. Much information has been gathered, but little has been done to organize the project, and make conceptual determinations as to what the audience wants. Our session was attended by experts like Lyle, down to people who were just learning about biodiesel. They let us know what they found valuable about existing resources, what they found problematic about existing resources, and what they felt the community needed in terms of educational materials. Our goals are more closely defined now, and more progress is ready to be made.

Much discussion was had in various sessions about how to start small businesses around biodiesel. Many cooperative biodiesel organizations have failed, but those that have survived discussed what they did to make it work, and keep it working. The major barrier is regulatory, selling biodiesel requires a tremendous amount of paperwork, and test results. The National Biodiesel Board makes much of this easier, but because they do not publicly release the results of their health effects testing (which the EPA requires from fuel producers), small producers are cut out of the loop. If you don't make enough money to join the NBB, you can't sell your fuel, but you can't join the NBB until you are making money (by selling fuel). The catch-22 is being discussed right now at the National NBB conference in Florida, which is being attended by a large consortium of individuals from the grassroots movement to make the situation known, and seek solutions.

Here in St. Louis new ideas are starting to brew. We are discussing the possibilities of creating a business of some sort, and expanding our reach in the community. Teaching a course at the community college would be a natural activity, and is something we are pursuing. Making and selling biodiesel equipment would be another possibility, as is the distribution of another producer's fuel. There are options, and we now know a lot more about them. Education is a natural direction, based on my experience, and will probably be our first move.

Stay tuned!
Posted by Sam at 08:49 PM

Forrest started a 'blog aggregator' for all the known biodiesel blogs:

http://biodieselblogs.truffula.net

Mark

From Lyle Estill:

February 25, 2005
Fire Marshall This Morning
http://www.biofuels.coop/blog/archives/000175.html

I have an hour and fifteen minutes before I meet the Fire Marshall over at Piedmont Biofuels Industrial. Normally this would not be a problem, I’ve passed inspection many times, except this time he has an axe to grind about our coop operation.

I’ve asked the Cosmic Waiter for this meeting to go well, and surely I will get everything I want or something better. But today’s meeting is against a backdrop of local regulation and history that is uncomfortable for us.

Local regulation keeps biodiesel underground. Anyone hanging around the scene has heard heroic tales of off-grid machine shops, solar inventions to avoid electrical permits, people operating out of container trucks which are mobile, and in U-Store-It facilities etc.

Piedmont Biofuels has always had a strategy of staying public. Which means we have been committed to staying legal. Girl Mark may not care for my spectacular speeches, but we believe they are an important part of our education and outreach. Since education and outreach is perhaps the largest piece of our pie, we can’t do it if we are hiding from the local authorities.

Our guest for staying legal began three years ago, when we wanted to set up our homebrewing operation at Moncure Chessworks. I went down to County Government and explained what we were doing and they flipped out.

They not only disallowed small scale production of biodiesel, they indicated that I would have to close my sculpture studio. Chessworks is an abandoned gas station on the edge of a forgotten highway—once the old road to Florida—that has long been replaced by four lane. It’s fuel tanks are still in the ground out front. I covered the open pipes with dirt, flowers and sculpture to reduce the risk of someone flicking an errant cigarette butt down there and blowing the village up.

From the County’s perspective, fuel is fuel. Vegetable oil and rocket fuel would be covered by the same page of the ordinance book.

At the time the County told us to move to an unzoned portion of Moncure, which led us to Summer Shop. With no running water, and no walls, Summer Shop had some decided disadvantages. But we were in compliance, and we persevered.

As an aside, I went to considerable effort to make Chessworks legal, the outcome of which was a new ordinance that allowed “Art Fabrication” to be permitted in areas zoned for business.

Our current refinery is in what was an abandoned mobile home, also in an unzoned portion of Chatham County. With its current interns, worker members, goats, chickens, and farming operations it would be hard to describe it as abandoned now. The fact is we have re-graveled the roads, and built new ones to accommodate the traffic about the place.

Which meant that when the Planning Department came for a surprise visit, they found us in compliance.

The Fire Marshall, on the other hand, felt that we needed a visit from County Inspections.

When I got wind of this I went to their office in Pittsboro and learned that you cannot do business out of a mobile home in Chatham County. When I enquired as to why, I was told it was for structural reasons dictated by the North Carolina Commercial Building Code.

“We are on a slab,” I said.

“Then you would need to get your slab stamped by a professional engineer…”

This struck me as lunacy, but I bit my tongue. Off I went to a local architect that I have worked with in the past. He can stamp. I explained the situation, in the hopes that he would come out and certify our slab.

“I thought you were a farm,” he said.

“We are,” I replied.

“North Carolina Commercial Building Code does not apply to farm structures,” he said.

And with that I had my angle. Chatham County government does not regulate the buildings of farm coops, and when I explored that with them, the case was closed.

Except not with the Fire Marshall. When I arranged our appointment for this morning, he brought up the coop. Today Leif and I want to get approval for an indoor tank farm at Industrial. It has nothing to do with our current operations, but there was a decided feeling that we have some unfinished business with the Fire Marshall.

In a few minutes we will go meet with him, and get clear about how all of our activities are legal, and he will permit our new tank farm design. That’s the order I’m putting in.

Lyle Estill's latest post:

http://www.biofuels.coop/blog/archives/000176.html#more
February 28, 2005
Office Downgrade

I thought that our office at Industrial was modest. Until today. Leif, Evan, and I share one phone, one fax, and some broadband in an abandoned control room. I have a piece of plywood over a steel frame where I sit.

But it is heated, and it has lights. We have a photocopier. And although it is close quarters, it works for now.

But today I came in to meet a team of electricians. The goal is to strip unwanted power which hangs in conduit from our proposed laboratory and proposed office space. Last week Tuesday cut out some enormous argon pipes to clear space for us. By shedding the pipes, and losing the electrical wires, we should be able to transform what was once an equipment room into a glorious office/lab/reception area.

Today I had visions of getting the electricians started, and retreating to a quiet Leif and Evan free office to work my book. I owe the publisher two chapters, one on the Grassroots Conference that has just passed, and another on this year’s NBB conference.

I was going to be upstairs in the quiet office collecting my thoughts, and the electricians were going to be tracing circuits back to the distribution panels and eliminating them entirely.

Except to do that we killed power to the whole building.

Which means I am now on a pair of sawhorses, on the lawn outside of building #3. I fished a scrap of wood out of Oneas’ pile for a desktop, and have run a hundred foot extension cord out to my notebook.

It’s supposed to get up to 55 today, slight breeze, and it’s not bad here in the sun. I can occasionally hear the electricians grunt and holler from across the way.

Our meeting with the Fire Marshall went exceedingly well. It turns out he did a tour of duty in Vietnam and is decidedly opposed to our current involvement in Iraq. Leif and I both have plenty of work ahead of us to meet his expectations, but it can all be achieved, and yesterday we were stoked about our prospects in general.

I think it is generally true that people who have seen combat are opposed to war, but then again, we are a generation that has not seen combat. My guess is that the Fire Marshall is on our side.
Posted by Lyle at February 28, 2005 10:34 AM

here's something scary that Kumar just posted:


Monday morning blues, er, greens, and other stuff.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/ybiofuels/41144.html


Every Monday morning, I try to clear up as many loose ends left from the prior week as possible. One of those, today, is represented by a jar of sickly sweet-smelling bright bright green stuff sitting on my desk:




That, believe it or not, is horribly mutated biodiesel. The mutation is derived from copper oxidation. We have a customer who has been having heater problems for a long time, and it finally became clear why when she mentioned offhandedly that she has copper plumbing for the fuel. Then she dropped off the sample: whoa! The important thing is that it actually creates a solid that can clog things, and the smell changes enough that I'm sure the fuel itself is chemically different. Bottom line: don't use copper with biodiesel!