Alaska on the Cover of biodieselSMARTER!

BiodieselSMARTER, my favorite biodiesel magazine, has a series of Alaska-centric features for their Spring ’09 issue.

Although it’s called biodieselSMARTER, there’s a fair bit of info for you SVO fans out there (and even some pieces on those people that blend unheated vegoil).

About half of the articles have been posted on their website, so check it out and subscribe – at $15 a year “it’s like a printed version of the infopop forum, but without all the fluff.”

(and yeah, that’s my truck.)

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!

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.

Alaska Biodiesel in the News.

I just caught wind of the January 2008 Biodiesel Magazine article on developing projects across the US. They highlighted the Alaska fish oil projects, and mentioned the grant for a portable fish-oil rendering facility, which I wrote about a few month’s back. Looks like I’ll have to give up some personal information and get a free subscription.

Also, the Anchorage Daily News published my response (original response here) to the Science magazine studies, which once again pointed out that destroying the rainforest is a bad way to grow oil crops for biofuels.

Veg On!