quote:

Originally posted by girl mark:
Hello folks,

I have been teaching beginners' biodiesel homebrewing classes and of course find that two days is never enough time to cover "everything" well enough, unless students have done a lot of research here first. In the past I've taught week-long Intensive classes and I"d like to do those again.

Thanksgiving farm biodiesel class:

Over Thanksgiving I co-taught a 'small farm biodiesel' (ie 200-300 gallon batches etc, not quite commercial-scale) class at Piedmont Biofuels (with Matt Rudolf officially, and with dKenny as an awesome visiting guest speaker). This was a lot of fun for all of us and I think it worked really well.

Most of the students in that class were well-read on the matter but hadn't really made fuel (or not much fuel), which worked really well. I think they were mostly on 'the same page' in their learning process.

Berkeley 'beginners-and-advanced-beginners' class today

This weekend I tried something new- a "beginners-and-advanced-beginners" class, where I"m trying to teach a mixed group of very beginning (but smart) students, and very advanced ones.

It's difficult to both teach complete beginner 'the basics' (ie what is titration and why can't I just stick a pH meter in the oil and what is bubblewashing' for example), and also keep it interesting for the more advanced students (three or four of them have been making fuel for a year but still have occasional problems or gaps in their knowledge, or aren't confident in what they know..

I'm not too happy with how the class has worked out today- mostly because we had SUCH advanced students that the questions from the advanced people jumped around a lot more topics than I like to fit into two days for the total newbies. I really like to keep the classes discussion-centered, and it didnt' work as well today as it has at other times, because the advanced students were way "too advanced" this time.

This same supposedly 'mixed' format worked quite well in my Thanksgiving class, but I dont think I"ll keep doing it this way because it seems difficult if the group is too mixed in experience level.

advanced topics only class

I've wanted for years to do an advanced class- covering ONLY:

quality control, two-stage acid-base processes, more advanced dewatering and methanol recovery topics, ethanol, advanced equipment topics such as solar heating, larger batches, 'balance of system' equipment tricks to make your processing neater or less janky/dangerous/messy/illegal, etc, and would like to be able to cover a lot more 'how to conduct scientific experiments' exercises- as well as covering advanced topics in testing- soap tests, soap neutralisation, magnesol, testing recovered methanol for purity and various methods of increasing it, ways to test for/deal with unknown strengths of methoxide or other occasional mistakes, glycerine acidulation and purification, glycerine burning for process heat, proper composting tricks, better handling of wash water.

I think this is a two-day class in itself.
But I"m not sure how much demand/interest there would be in this, and that's what I"m trying to gauge here in this thread.

Cost:

It would be my standard $120 weekend class, running from 10-4 or even 10-5 each day, and it would be in Berkeley in late winter, maybe mid- or late Febuary. If there's sufficient interest I"d also schedule one somewhere in late May or early June when I do my next round of travel around the Midwest/East Coast.

head count- who's interested?
So, kind of a head count- is there anyone who'd be interested in such a class, who's made SOME fuel or has a full processor already (you don't have to be a wiz cause you'd not need a class then, but not be just a lurker, by then)?

suggested topics?
Please list any other suggestions for stuff you'd like to see in an advanced class- I"m mostly interested in covering

a. chemistry topics
b. getting good scientific process into people's heads (ie think of how Tilly isolates variables when conducting experiments- not everyone does this and they should)
c. safer disposal of glycerine and wash water, including equipment for this (ie tumbling composters, greywater system)

I do NOT want to cover:

a. regulatory
b. activist topics (ie the 'what do you do to spearhead the movement in your city/how do you run a co-op' sorts of things- we have the Co-ops conference in July in Colorado for that)
c. high-tech theoretical topics of any sort (ie high pressure, high temperature processing, laboratory testing)
d. GL's one day process, due to my lack of experience with it
e. full-size commercial production, that's covered at the Iowa State University courses
f. oil pressing equipment or oilcrops info, I'm not a farmer.

Four-day classes for beginners and advanced:

-I could do a beginners' class during the week, say, Thur-Fri, and then those no-longer-beginners could go on to attend the advanced one on the weekend. I have taught a lot of these 4-day classes in the past and really perfer them.

Total cost would be $240 for four days. I"d prefer to do this in Berkeley at the moment.

Piedmont Biofuels-organized seminar on quality control

-theres some vague talk (I hate it cause all I want to do is stay at home right now) of me coming to co-teach or co-organize a quality testing seminar at Piedmont Biofuels in early spring(I dont really want to do it because I dont want to travel any more for a while).

If this Piedmont thing happens and they hire me to co-organize it, I may be able to schedule one of my regular classes the week before, to make it worth my time (this is just a possibility at the moment, we haven't really made official inquiries yet at the facilities that are available for classroom space).

It might be possible for me to schedule the proposed "advanced class" on a Thur-Fri, before the Piedmont-organized quality seminar on the weekend.

The Piedmont quality seminar (not my advanced class, but the seminar they're running) will involve the true laboratory tests, with a visit to a state or university fuels lab (ie "see a real live cetane engine" etc), as well as the "backyard" quality control protocol. I might be jumping the gun by announcing their seminar here- the grant might stipulate that it's to have only an in-state, local audience or something- but that's what I understand of it right now.

a week-long class at Piedmont Biofuels???
I have taught a week-long class at Piedmont before, and have talked idly about doing it again. Im not completely sure it's possible with the current facilities, but I hope it happens at some point this next year. Possibly it could look like:

two days of my regular beginner class
two days of my proposed 'advanced topics class'
MAYBE (I don't know if this is possible the same week) two days of the Piedmont-organized laboratory quality testing/quality control class, which might be redundant for those who attended the first four days already.

most likely in Berkeley, though...
So... thoughts? Who's interested in what? Would you travel to Berkeley to do this, since I"m most likely to actually schedule this in Berkeley rather than anywhere else (including Piedmont, where these future 'advanced' classes by me are all just theoretical talk at this point)?