San Francisco Biodiesel Progress

Check out the meeting notes from a recent SF Department of the Environment meeting about biodiesel - they're hoping to eventually get a few biodiesel filling stations going in the City!

Pretty Graphs (and lots more)

TreeHugger links to a massive report on biofuels from the Worldwatch Institute, check it out.

Reality Check?

Just came across biodieselrealitycheck.com on a mailing list, sigh - lots of FUD there.

NewFangledGreen

Ev just linked to a new Green blog, which had two diesel-related tidbits on its front page when I skimmed it yesterday:

Honda to sell Diesels in US: "By 2009, Honda plans on selling diesels in the U.S. along with it’s hybrids as part of it’s core environmental strategy. The first diesel will most likely be the CR-V sport utility vehicle."

Chrysler to offer Diesel SUV next year: "Look for a diesel version of the Jeep Grand Cherokee early next year at a Chrysler dealer near you. The new Jeep will be powered by a turbo diesel engine supplied by Mercedes-Benz. The 3.0-liter diesel engine will be up to 30% more fuel efficient then the current gasoline models (that equates to about 5 mpg better)."

Nice!

Wired on Biodiesel

The latest issue of Wired briefly mentions biodiesel:

"Saving the planet can be a real pain in the butt. Just ask Peter Bethune, who's powering his speedboat with biodiesel made of fat from his backside. In May, the 41-year-old New Zealander embarks on a voyage to promote the use of renewable fuels and to break the record for circumnavigating the globe. (Bethune hopes to finish in 65 days - 10 days faster than the current speedboat record.) His eco-friendly vessel, Earthrace, is a wave-piercing 78-foot trimaran capable of hitting 45 knots (58 mph). Of course, nobody's butt is big enough to sustain a 27,600-mile journey. Bethune's contribution amounts to only a liter of fuel; the rest comes from vegetable oils and other animal fats. Besides, liposuction hurts. 'I was bruised all over,' he says. 'It was a personal sacrifice.'

The numbers at the end of the piece are a bit FUD-y though:

Fuel by the numbers

• Gallons of biodiesel that can be made from one acre of soybeans: 50
• Arable acres in the US: 427 million
• Gallons of gasoline used by the average American driver in a year: 464
• Drivers in the US: 198 million
• Arable acres needed to make enough biodiesel for all of them: 1.8 billion

Only a small percentage (3% according to the San Diego Union Tribune) of cars on the road in the US are diesel-powered...

Clean Car Maps

Clean Car Maps provides fueling station info for all sorts of alt fuels - electric inductive and conductive, CNG, LNG, Ethanol, Methanol and Hydrogen - but for some reason biodiesel isn't there...

New Biodiesel Reactor

Just saw this on Slashdot:

"A professor of chemical engineering at Oregon State University developed a small reactor to directly convert vegetable oil to biodiesel. Goran Jovanovic reports his invention is approximately the size of a credit card. It pumps vegetable oil and alcohol through parallel channels to convert the oil into biodiesel almost instantly. Current mainstream methods to produce biodiesel take more than a day and also produces other byproducts which must be neutralized before disposal or use in other manufacturing processes."

The Forbes piece says this new process doesn't even require a catalyst...

Faster Biodiesel

TreeHugger reports on a new process for speeing up the biodiesel-making process:

Goran Jovanovic, professor of chemical engineering at OSU, serves as lead investigator in the research. Jovanovic keeps a design prototype in a sandwich bag in his office. It's a plastic plate with 30 microreactor channels running parallel to each other, each about the width of a human hair. The entire plate can easily fit in the palm of a hand.

At one end of the plate are two indents. Jovanovic fills one with alcohol and the other with oil. They flow down the channels, reacting and producing glycerol — a common ingredient in soap and biodiesel.

He noted that microtechnology produces biodiesel about 100 times faster than the classical method. Another benefit is the small size of the plates, which makes the microreactors discrete and deployable.

Via: Corvallis Gazette-Times

New Propel Fuels site

Rob from Propel Biofuels just wrote to let me know they've relaunched their site, check it out:

http://www.propelbiofuels.com/site/

Cold Weather Tips

A member of the SF Biofuel Co-op recently posted this to our mailing list, I'm re-printing it with his permission:

"The fuel we are currently using should not gel until it reaches about 15 degrees, plug filters at 20 and it should start clouding around 35 to 40. Cloudy fuel should pass normally through filters & into the injectors. That being said, I have a sample here that is not cloudy yet. You should notice a slightly rougher start if you get the engine when cold. Diesels are certainly cranky when cold. Just be sure to let it idle briefly (1-2 min) before reving it and getting on the freeway. This will make sure there is a chance for the oil to thin and get pumped around the valves. If the cold starting is significantly harder than normal, then splash some diesel in it. Diesel has the same properties as biodiesel just about twenty degrees colder. Also don't forget the glow plugs, perhaps even run them twice and happy driving."

Diesel/Hybrid Buses in London

TreeHugger has the lowdown:

"Only time will tell if London commuters will share my enthusiasm as Transport for London unleashes 6 diesel/electric hybrid busses as an experiment in clean people-moving. The 6 Wrightbus Electrocity series busses will run the loop between Elephant/Castle and Royal Albert Hall."

MSNBC: BioWillie

California gets a whiff of BioWillie - Celebrity News - MSNBC.com: "BioWillie went on sale Wednesday at an alternative fuel station in San Diego where the 72-year-old singer filled his tour bus from a pump emblazoned with a picture of himself strumming a guitar."