| Archive for bridgebuilder.myfreeforum.org bridgebuilding effort, cross culture, cross faith, not bridge construction |
| obmar |
The Biodiesel Threadhttp://biodiesel.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/719605551/m/9721044051Making Biodiesel |
| obmar |
http://www.localb100.com/book.html
Table of Contents, Edition 10: - No Such Thing as Converting a Car To Biodiesel: Two Vegetable Oil Fuels Options Demystified - The Basics of Biodiesel - Some Websites and Forums for Learning More - Things to Expect when Using Biodiesel - Homebrew Biodiesel Process Overview - Getting Started: How To Make 1-Liter Test Batches - Titration, Titration Titration: Finding Free Fatty Acids In Oil - Dewatering Oil and Testing for Water - Biodiesel Chemistry for Non-Chemists - Quality Tests - Testing for Soap in Unwashed Biodiesel and Glycerol - Clarity and Cloudiness- quality control and visual appearance - Washing Biodiesel and Why and How We Do It - Bubblewashing 101 - Troubleshooting “Wash Problems” - Upsizing Batches, Making And Using Road Fuel - Glycerol Purification and Use - Acidulating and Purifying Glycerol - Basics Of A Biodiesel Reactor System - Carboy Methoxide Mixer System - Weldless Processor Based on 55-Gallon Drum - Future articles and topics to be covered by this zine - Complete Reactor and System Plans: Standpipe Wash Tank Plans Simple Processor Based on an Electric Water Heater Biodiesel Appleseed Reactor- the $150, No-weld Biodiesel Reactor - Using the Appleseed Reactor Parts Diagram for the Biodiesel Appleseed Reactor Shopping list for Appleseed parts |
| obmar |
http://localb100.com/ |
| obmar |
Local B100 And Why ‘Niche Markets’ Matter:
A US Biodiesel Industry Primer Biodiesel Industry Trends and B100 Biodiesel Blends Marketing The US biodiesel industry, under the leadership of the National Biodiesel Board, somewhat discourages use of biodiesel as B100, or pure biodiesel, and instead focuses their marketing efforts towards sale of biodiesel as low-level blends with petroleum diesel (B20) or as an additive. One example is ‘B5’ - 5% biodiesel and 95% petroleum, which at this blend level has fairly small (5%-ish) reduction in emissions and human health impact over the petroleum version. Instead of calling this blend P95 (Petroleum 95%) it’s sometimes incorrectly marketed as ‘biodiesel’, utilizing all the positive press/name recognition that B100 biodiesel receives. The biodiesel industry generally considers B100 as an insignificant ‘niche market’, which ignores environmental, social, and other reasons why many consumers wish to see B100 available to them as a fuels choice. In addition, the focus on blends marketing leaves the biodiesel industry open to attacks from what is referred to as the ‘anti-diesel lobby’, including attempts to ban diesel vehicle use in various applications such as municipal fleets, and a lot of attacks on biodiesel as a viable alternative. The antidiesel lobby generally supports converting diesel infrastructure to competing alternative diesel fuels such as CNG and sometimes using other fuels such as Fisher-Tropsch synthesis, both of which have ties to powerful energy industries (natural gas and coal) that biodiesel does not have. Factors in Biodiesel Industry’s Marketing Strategy Part of the industry strategy which discourages B100 marketing, is driven by the overall conservatism within the auto industry- which famously resists change and especially resists the adoption of alternative fuels. This sometimes takes the form of concerns or lack of support from engine manufacturers, fuel injection equipment manufacturers and oil companies (although the same exact companies warranty B100 use in Europe). This resistance takes place in the area of regulatory/policy lobbying. For instance, the California Department of Measurement Standards received negative commentary regarding it’s new biodiesel sales rules from Exxon/Texaco, Engine Manufacturers Association, Western States Petroleum Association, and Alliance of Automotive Manufacturers, and these petitioners effectively urged the banning of B100 sale. It is also found in the development of the ASTM specifications governing fuels composition. For instance, at the request of petroleum industry members of ASTM, the ASTM D-6751 spec for biodiesel contains some specifications that are irrelevant to biodiesel operation, one of the examples being the distillation curve, which later allows the claim that biodiesel sales should be restricted because there’s too much of a difference between the petro spec that engines are designed for and the biodiesel spec, such as in the distillation curve spec. Most famously, the resistance to biodiesel adoption by the auto industry takes place in the area of warranty coverage (for example VW of America has stated, illegally (in violation of the Magnuson-Moss Act), that any use of biodiesel will entirely void the warranty on VW vehicles). B100 Customer Service, Customer Education, and ‘Hand-holding’ Another part of the industry strategy is probably a response to the fact that B100 use requires greater customer education and customer service due to the differences between biodiesel and petroleum diesel (ie cold weather issues and initial solvency/fuel filter clogging concerns, and some longterm storage stability concerns). Greater levels of customer service (‘hand-holding’) is needed and the traditional petroleum sales/agribusiness infrastructure is not set up to supply this in the normal course of business. Lower level blends require fewer of these special precautions, and less work in educating customers than higher blends require. Current High Costs of Commercial Biodiesel Another aspect of the industry blends strategy is that the greater cost of biodiesel (currently about $3.30 a gallon for B100 compared to $1.80 a gallon for petrodiesel) is a big deterrent to it’s sales. If the same gallons of biodiesel made by a manufacturer, are divided up into B02 blendstock instead of being sold as B100, it is easier to ‘sell’ this product and the price at the pump (hardly higher than petroleum diesel) doesn’t give consumers ‘sticker shock’. The marketing work is much easier when selling the same number of gallons as ‘blendstock’ rather than as B100. Market Penetration and the Blends Marketing Strategy Another aspect of the biodiesel industry marketing strategy is driven by their analysis of ‘market penetration’. This primarily affects the industry’s focus on selling the fuel to fleets (as B20 or less). This strategy states that there’s more money to be made, more easily, by impacting 10% of the huge fleet market in the form of blends sales, than in trying to penetrate for instance 50% of the tiny US passenger car diesel market (which is overall far smaller in number of gallons of diesel purchased annually). Grassroots Biodiesel B100 Advocates: From my contact with the biodiesel industry I feel that it’s useless to attempt to change these policies from within a group like the NBB or within the approach of most larger biodiesel producers. Some of us feel that what is needed for more B100 use and availability, is for a sort of ‘parallel’ development of B100 production and distribution, rather than relying on the industry and on petroleum infrastructure to bring B100 to us. This independent, B100-centered distribution already exists in northern California- our primary success with biodiesel sales as B100 has been when it is distributed by dedicated B100 activist businesspeople, who are prepared to do the customer service and support that petroleum distributors are not equipped to do. We have had several failed attempts by petroleum distributors at stocking the product, and they had trouble justifying the lower profits and the high amount of customer service needed. Currently, B100 is primarily distributed in Northern California by Yokayo Biofuels, Biofuel Oasis, and Biofuel Station, by Pacific Biofuels, and by biodiesel co-ops like Sonoma County Biodiesel Co-op, and they have been as much of a source of accurate information and public education as any of the other biodiesel educators out here. Recently, biodiesel activists have formed the Biodiesel Council of California in an attempt to coordinate statewide activity by consumers, producers, and distributors who support B100 use primarily. This was especially timely as we have had to deal with regulatory oversight of B100 sales (through California Department of Food and Agriculture) and legislative/policy action (through a state assembly bill that defines biodiesel standards for B20). Small Scale Commercial Production: The current regulatory climate regarding legal small scale biodiesel production differs from locality to locality. It is important to understand that there is a big difference between homebrewers and small-scale commercial producers. Homebrew Regulations: Homebrewers are usually operating in a regulatory grey area, although some have received the endorsement of their various local regulatory officials. Fire marshals, hazardous materials departments (not found in every area), federal and state tax agencies, federal and local environmental protection agencies, landlords, insurance providers, and building departments are often the regulatory agencies under whose jurisdiction homebrewers may fall. As is common in other pursuits, homebrewers operating in agriculturally zoned areas have much more of a ‘green light’ from their regulatory agencies than those in cities or suburban areas. Many homebrewers take a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy regarding regulations, and hope that their self-policing is adequate as far as safety and environmental regulations are concerned. Often the level of regulatory concern is directly tied to how much of the process chemicals and the oil/biodiesel a homebrewer stores on site, as well as their storage/operating practices. Small-scale Commercial Production Regulations: Smallscale commercial production falls under the same set of regulations as other small oleochemical operations- ie soap or detergent manufacturers, rendering, and other types of operations, rather than those regulations governing petroleum refining, which in general shouldn’t apply to the processes biodiesel manufacturing employs. Judging from the experience of distributors of nontoxic, nonflammable commercial biodiesel, it may require some work to convince local zoning boards or or regulatory agencies that your operation shouldn’t be regulated like a petroleum refinery or petroleum distribution business. To save every small scale biodiesel business person from reinventing the wheel locally, it would be useful to develop a clearinghouse of past precedent that smallscale operators have set with their regulatory agencies, as regulators are much happier working from precedent. EPA Registration: In addition, producers of fuel for onroad use (other than homebrewers) are subject to EPA rules regarding registration of fuel and fuel additive producers under the Clean Air Act (published in 40 CFR part 79). This ruling states that any manufacturer of a fuel or fuel additive must either submit an extremely expensive set of Tier I and Tier II health effects test results to the EPA (with a small business exemption from Tier II). This testing costs somewhere in the 2 million dollar range, and the regulations state that there are high fines to be levied on any producer who sells onroad fuel without registering with the EPA (employees of the relevant office of the EPA have stated that homebrewers are exempt, but that inhouse production for small fleet use, co-ops, people ‘trading’ fuel for things other than cash, or other group use is generally NOT exempt). The only practical way to avoid submitting your own test data is to join the National Biodiesel Board, pay their annual fees (from $5,000 per year for normal membership and from $2500 a year nonvoting associate membership), and submit their own data to the EPA when registering. This NBB data will go into the public domain in 2015. There has been much discussion of the validity of some of the EPA’s classification of biodiesel as a class of fuel that requires this testing (there is a ‘baseline’ class of fuels which would exempt small businesses from both Tier I and Tier II, but due to some technicalities biodiesel is no longer classified as a ‘baseline’ fuel). It is possible that this classification could be challenged someday. There was also a taxpayer-funded Department of Energy submission of Tier I, but as the testing was not conducted properly, the data was not accepted by the EPA (wrong test engine used for emissions tests, etc). There is occasional discussion, which has gone to a fairly advanced level of planning, about paying for a Tier I re-attempt of ‘our’ own (estimated cost $100,000, may not need to be paid all at once, and may or may not be able to salvage some of the original taxpayer funded data). This would either create a public domain set of data which could be used by anyone who does not need Tier II to register (ie small businesses), or could instead be used to found an organization of small producers who would pay for the data and have use of it at lower rates and under different conditions than the NBB and perhaps be able to eventually ‘get the money back’, unlike membership in the NBB where the money stays within the NBB. Recently, after great pressure from B100 and small producer advocates, the National Biodiesel Board changed their membership and Health Effects Data access policies, to lower the minimum annual membership fees and to create a category for smallscale commercial producers. The category is a nonvoting associate membership, and costs $2500 per year regardless of volume produced, for producers making anything under 250,000 gallons per year. In contrast, membership for larger producers costs 1 cent per gallon per year produced, or cheaper for larger volume producers. In-House/On-Farm Production and Small-Scale ‘Niche Market’ Production It appears to some B100 advocates that the best route to more B100 availability, and to more ecologically sustainable biodiesel production, and also the route to the existence of biodiesel producers who are more accountable to their customers on issues of quality and sustainability, is to create more smallscale, locally-owned biodiesel production and distribution businesses rather than relying on product shipped from faraway producers with the current biodiesel industry outlook. Currently most plant technology providers make larger scale plants which are out of the price range of producers under 500,000 gallons per year production. One exception is the Biodiesel Industries Mini-MPU “research plant”, which comes at a cost of about $50,000 (?) and makes about 150 gallons per day. Many people from the homebrewer community think that plants this size could be produced cheaper or more effectively handle larger volumes, If this is true, we could make the technology available to more potential producers which could make biodiesel more economically than the large industry can. Some examples of this scenario include local waste oils collection- it is not practical for the biodiesel industry to collect every drop of waste oil in every corner of the US and ship it to distant centralized biodiesel processing plants and to then ship it back to every niche market for sale, but it is relatively easy to build small plants right at the oil source/fuel market and to eliminate the financial and ‘embodied energy’ costs of transportation. Other examples include farmers raising crops that produce waste oils (ie cotton for instance) who could utilize the biodiesel produced if they could make it on-farm without great input of either capital or labor. Another example includes municipal fleets- which have a hard time justifying the high cost of B100 right now- but which could probably produce biodiesel with an in-house processing facility if a cheap, semi-automated one existed. This last example is being explored with existing technology such as the MiniMPU. Small scale production technology differs from homebrewer technology in a number of ways that homebrewers may be unaware of. Obviously one area is regulations- businesses spend a lot of money on compliance with various environmental and safety regulations that homebrewers either ignore or are not affected by until they become businesses. Another area is that process technology generally employs more expensive materials due to materials compatibility issue generally ignored by homebrewers. This is due to both safety issues (ie plastics used by some homebrewers are fairly unsafe in case of fire) and due to materials compatibility issues of biodiesel storage stability and the metals found in common plumbing (ie biodiesel should be produced with stainless steel equipment for the most part, and copper, zinc, brass and iron that are found in plumbing aren’t a good idea in a commercial plant due to concerns about degradation of the biodiesel’s storage stability). Homebrewers often ignore the labor involved in their hobby, and often conduct operations inefficiently which would all have to change before their techniques can be applied to commercial or in-house fleet production. Many more homebrewers are making the jump to commercial production techniques in recent years, thanks to the Iowa State University biodiesel production courses, which are a great primer on commercial production. See www.me.iastate.edu/biodiesel for more information. Open-Design and Small-Scale Commercial Production? I personally believe that small-scale commercial biodiesel production can be similar to homebrewing in one important area- the development of techniques by a sort of ‘open-source’ design process. Open-design, a similar concept to ‘open-source’ development in computer software, is already being practiced in other appropriate technology realms in which larger businesses aren’t doing research. Biodiesel has obvious parallels with other ‘appropriate technology’ work and the level of volunteerism and enthusiast/activist participation is similar to that of other AT work (ie such as the development of low-tech cooking stoves or water sterilization technologies for refugee camps, where the technology will not lead to a product where profit is to be made, but where activists have tried with varying degrees of success to work on technology development). Other important analogies to note are the ways that the organic farming movement developed- with enthusiasts and activist businesses and with the support of activist consumers, and self-regulation and self-policing as to quality control. In the larger-scale biodiesel production technology field, there is a trend whereby companies which develop successful biodiesel plants tend to turn around and sell their plant designs to other biodiesel companies. In the larger-scale production, there is a lot of emphasis on volume and efficiency, which requires more exacting technologies rather different from the needs of homebrewers who tend to use lower-tech processes and tend to substitute capital costs for waiting time (one example being the “time and gravity” approach of homebrewers to settling product, rather than expensive centrifuges used in industry). I personally feel that smaller-scale production facilities can fall on the ‘lower-tech’ side of the scale, closer to homebrewing but with some of the inefficiencies eliminated and with some automation incorporated. I also believe that unlike largescale biodiesel production, this lower-tech approach lends itself well to sharing of information with others in the smallscale commercial production technology business. Currently it is certainly in the interest of would-be small producers to share info with each other – something that’s not generally been happening openly as small producers tend to be secretive about their business development- and I also believe that there are enough people now who are qualified to design an efficient, low-cost smallscale biodiesel production plant that we should attempt an ‘open-source’ biodiesel plant design for fleet/small producer/on-farm niche market use under 500,000 gallons per year. In coming months, I plant to work on facilitating such a project at this website and at the www.groups.yahoo.com/group/local-b100-biz list. My primary interest is 50,000 gallon per year production and I know of several of us who have worked at adapting homebrewer techniques to this scale of production technology. Links: www.me.iastate.edu/biodiesel www.groups.yahoo.com/group/local-b100-biz www.biodieselcouncil.org http://www.pipeline.to/biodiesel/ www.ybiofuels.org www.livejournal.com/~ybiofuels www.biofuels.coop/blog |