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Marietta, OH and/or Columbus, OH, mid-fall (various classes)
Biodiesel fuel can be made in your backyard or garage for .75 cents a gallon with common ingredients, using very inexpensive equipment. Relatively little chemistry knowledge is needed to produce quality fuel that will run in any diesel engine, and thousands of people around the country have discovered homebrewing fuel to be an addictive hobby. Come learn what it takes to produce your own clean-burning biodiesel fuel, and to build the equipment to do so.
These classes are hands-on and fast-paced - you'll be making test batches of fuel, titrating and testing oil, and assessing quality of the finished product throughout the two day class. Weekend classes also include some hands-on equipment building- we'll build a few biodiesel processors for students who purchase processor plumbing kits in advance, and everyone will be wrenching on the plumbing and learning the skills needed to build your home biodiesel system. See below for details of buying the plumbing kits for this class. Some of the classes will also include a demonstration of a local, working biodiesel system similar to what you'll be building in your class.
These two classes teach the basics of producing biodiesel, quality control, and eqiupment design. In the two-day Essentials class, you can also build a reactor to take home (not in the one-day Introduction class!), provided you purchase a kit from b100supply.com. Please contact b100supply.com after registering for the class for a discount on either of the two Appleseed reactor kits (we willl only build the reactor, not the wash tank, due to limited time in the class). B100supply.com has a deadline of two weeks prior to class date for ordering kits. You may not bring your own hardware store parts to assemble in class, as there is not enough time alotted in the class to do so.
please note:
The two-day Essentials class covers biodiesel homebrewing for 1 1/2 days, and equipment is built at the very end (ie it is NOT one day of homebrewing and one day of equipment, so you will miss more topics besides equipment building if you attend a one-day instead of a two-day class).
The one-day Introduction To Homebrewing class is a 9-5, one-day and sped-up version version of the Essentials class. We will not build equipment, but you should have a good exposure to most of the concepts during the day-long course.
Both classes are a combination of lecture and have hands-on 'lab' sessions where you will practice titrating oil, making test batches, making mistakes intentionally and learning from them, testing the biodiesel, washing the biodiesel in test batches, and testing oil.
Building a reactor is only the beginning of setting up an efficient system, and how you set it up within the rest of the system can make all the difference in whether biodiesel homebrewing is a timeconsuming hassle or a fun hobby.
This is a class in a 'live' homebrew system setting, in which we will make full size batches of biodiesel in an Appleseed reactor, discuss what the experienced students in the class already do and what challenges come up for us, and show different efficiency or safety 'tricks' in live action. We will discuss other homebrew alternatives to the Appleseed (Graham Laming's Eco-System Processor, and larger processors) and illustrate several variations on the 'standard' process from the perspective of alternative equipment that may make these variations easier or to ensure higher quality biodiesel. This class also covers methanol recovery and alternatives to water-washing.
This class is geared to people who already know how to make biodiesel, either in a lab-scale, or for those who already homebrew but would like to compare notes with me on how I manage my system. You may take this class after attending a regular homebrewing class taught by someone else as well as if you have learned how to make biodiesel on your own. We dont go into a lot of detail on titration and chemistry here so that’s the info you should have ‘down’ already on your own prior to taking this “system tricks” class. This class will overlap SLIGHTLY with the Advanced Topics class but you may be interested in attending both regardless- the overlap isn't much.
The Oakland class takes place in my "home" system, where I "pulled out all the stops" on neatness, spill and accident prevention, simple automation, and quality control. It is a larger Appleseed similar to what small biodiesel co-ops or small-scale fleet producers sometimes use, with heavy modifications. The Oakland class is only one day so we will move faster and cover a few less topics than the two-day System Tricks classes.
The Pittsboro and Wilmington class takes place using my mobile processor trailer and the Pittsboro class also involves a tour of Piedmont Biofuels Coop's system.
See this blog post for details: Diary of a Mad Scientist system tricks post
For this class, you should have already made biodiesel either in a 'test' scale or in full-size equipment. You can take this class if you've attended a prior class of mine or of one of the teachers listed below under Advanced Topics.
The advanced class is designed for those who already make biodiesel (full-scale or test batches) or have attended hands-on workshops by teachers such as Jennifer Radtke, John Bush, Steve Fugate, BioLyle Rudensey, Piedmont Biofuels, Matt Steiman, Frankie Lind, Kalib Kersch, or others who teach from the http://biodieselcommunity.org techniques (check with me if a class is your only hands-on experience).
Some of the topics covered in the advanced class include:
Quality control in great detail, analysis of real-world problems with offspec
biodiesel, acid-base biodiesel process, advanced topics in dewatering, testing
for soap,methanol recovery and equipment design, testing recovered methanol
for purity, waterless washing with Amberlite and Magnesol, larger-scale equipment
design (for co-ops or small farms), treating wash water and glycerine for disposal,
testing wash water and glycerine, real-world test results related to biodegradability,
in-depth disposal/sidestreams discussion, burning glycerine safely for energy,
hydronic applications for biodiesel and wash water heating, more advanced discussion
of safety and disaster prevention scenarios for larger-scale processor systems,
discussion of regulatory topics for non-commercial producers larger than homebrew,
solar heating options, very through discussion/demonstration of several different
options in washing, including drawbacks and advantages, greywater systems for
wash water recycling
This class falls somewhere between System Tricks and Advanced Topics (with some information from both as well as new information), and focuses on what is often called 'farm-scale' and 'fleet-scale'. This class covers production considerations for systems in the 250-gallon to 600-gallon range, with some information on continuous process alternatives to the batch system.
The concern with this scale of processing is about applying homebrew or hobby-scale techniques to larger production, which often brings about greater safety concerns and more complicated quality control considerations.
While homebrewing is a great way to become familiar with biodiesel production and a great way to go through 'the learning curve' with unparalleled support from the online homebrew community, the process becomes more complicated on a larger scale.
Some homebrew-scale techniques and equipment scale up to larger batch sizes, while many do not. For those making biodiesel for fleet/business/farm use, serious concern has to be paid to efficiency and safety to make this scale of production make financial sense. Scaling up from hobby-scale to this size of production sometimes brings on regulatory issues that homebrew scale producers do not deal with, yet production on this scale is still typically a do-it-yourself effort where producers don't tend to seek out engineering assistance and sometimes risk bigger messes and accidents than either homebrewers or commercial producers tend to experience. This class will cover some of the issues that have come up for fleets, co-ops, and farm production, from an equipment, safety, and quality control perspective.
This class is for people with past biodiesel experience, or those who attend the one-day Introduction class on Friday May 30.
A one-day class where we build methanol recovery equipment, motorized methanol/lye mixers, modified Appleseed reactors with additonal mixing assists such as venturis or static mixers, modified (welded) wash tanks, drying tanks, Turk Burners for process heat, etc. If you wish to build any of this equipment for your own use, please email me. Parts costs and more details will be posted soon. You may attend even if you don't want to build your own equipment of course.
Maria 'Mark' Alovert has been teaching biodiesel homebrewing and general biodiesel awareness workshops since 2000, and is the inventor of the most widely-used homebrew biodiesel equipment design in the US, the Appleseed biodiesel processor. She is currently working on small-scale commercial-type systems for on-farm production of biodiesel.
Here's what some students have said about recent classes:
Pittsboro, NC , Atlanta, GA in January, Houston, TX , Pigeon, MI and also here,
Graydon Blair's review of Salt Lake City workshop and also here
photos from Lee NH class here
review of one of my California classes here
reviews from past classes (summer-fall 2004) are linked here
| May 22 | Oakland, CA |
Introduction To Biodiesel Homebrewing (no experience necessary) 9-5 |
sorry, sold out | hosted by me and my "co-op" at my 'home' system |
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May 23
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Oakland, CA |
System Tricks This is a one-day class, must have prior experience or attend a class by another teacher (see 'advanced topics' description above) 9-5 |
$75 Sorry, sold out
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hosted by me and my "co-op" at my 'home' system |
| May 30, 2008 | Grayslake, IL |
Introduction to Biodiesel Production- no experience necessary 9-5 |
Sorry, sold out! |
hosted by The Biodiesel Co-op at Prairie Crossing |
| May 31-June 1 | Grayslake, IL | Growing Out Of The Appleseed: upgrading from
homebrew to farm/fleet scale production
(must have prior experience or attend Introduction or Biodiesel Essentials class) 9-5 |
$120 note: there is plenty of space in the enormous classroom we're using , and this class will not sell out. Sign on up. |
hosted by The Biodiesel Co-op at Prairie Crossing |
| June 7-8 | Pittsboro, NC |
Biodiesel Essentials- no experience necessary 10-5 each day |
$120 | All proceeds from this class benefits Piedmont Biofuels Cooperative's summer internship program |
| June 14-15 | Pittsboro, NC |
Biodiesel Equipment Intensive, no experience necessary 10-5 each day |
$120 plus optional parts if you'd like to build equipment to take home. Contact me separately from registration, to purchase equipment parts (optional). |
All proceeds from this class benefits Piedmont Biofuels Cooperative's summer internship program |
| June 28-29 | Pittsboro NC |
Biodiesel Production System Tricks (must have prior experience or attend Introduction class). 10-5 each day |
$120 |
All proceeds from this class benefit Piedmont Biofuels Cooperative's summer internship program |
| July 26-27 | Pittsboro, NC |
Advanced Topics in biodiesel production (must have prior experience or have attended a previous class- see this link above)9-5 each day |
$120 | All proceeds from this class benefits Piedmont Biofuels Cooperative's summer internship program |
| August 9-10 | San Pedro, New Mexico (near Edgewood) |
Biodiesel Essentials, no experience necessary 10-5 each day |
$120: |