Diary of a Mad Scientist

Lyle coined (I think) the awesome phrase ‘imblogable’. That’s when events are happening quicker than your mouth can run. Or your fingers can type. Or there are hours in the day…

I’ve been completely imblogable for the past three months. It was such an insane rush of overwork getting ready to leave for the road.

Tonight I pulled a 12-hour day- I’m midway through four days of Boot Camp (ie advanced class is this weekend in PA, regular class was the past two days and a different regular class was the previous weekend).

I taught from 10-4:30, had lunch with Matt Steiman and the president of the college that’s hosting this class (Dickinson College- amazing sustainability initiative, with Jen and Matt growing organic produce for the dining halls and a bunch of imblogably great projects). Spent the afternoon’s 10-minute break begging the school’s mechanic to weld/machine a fitting for my methoxide mixer. After the break it was three hours of juggling a bunch of biodiesel newbies who were working their way through a 3-hour ‘open lab’ project and simultaneous equipment build (at which a plumber disagreed with a farmer’s way of cleaning up copper for soldering a condensor, which is really funny considering the two different professions). At 4:30 I was literally running to car to drive to the weld store before it closes for the weekend, to buy a gas cylinder for the little MIG I brought along, at 5:00 I spent 10 minutes scarfing down some apples and cheese for dinner while driving back to the shop, came back at 5:10 and finished a methanol recovery condensor at, at 5:25 I heard the sound of running water and smelled the smell of (non-methanol-containing) biodiesel- in the wrong place- ran into the biodiesel shop and discovered a massive wash water spill- all while Matt was gone to an organic farming engagement in another town (luckily they have secondary containment around the entire room, so it’s only biodiesel equipment that’s floating in 80 gallons of soap water, a few gallons of emulsion, and 50 gallons of biodiesel), called Matt and did damage control till 5:35, cleaned up, washed glassware and table surfaces and titration kits and re-arranged everything for the weekend class till 8:45, ran to Office Depot for last-minute supplies and Lowe’s for spill clean-up supplies till 10:00, felt glazed over, exhausted, and sick of all things plumbing-related while shopping for a million other odds and ends for my system at Lowes (till 10:00 pm), ran back to the shop and Matt’s personal Lake Biodiesel at 10:15, dropped off cleaning supplies in front of the door to Lake Biodiesel, finally took a deep breath at 10:18 pm.

Remembered that I hadn’t eaten substantial food since lunch. Climbed over the railroad embankment and ran in the rain to the diner, collapsed in a booth, gobbled down a slab of protein. Could see myself in the mirror looking half dead. went back over the railroad embankment to meet Matt and Jen, in their fancy dinner clothes, staring at the awful spill (in it’s containment). Took photos of matt in white pants and dress shoes in the dry ‘hill’ that the floor formed in the middle of the spill. Laughed. Discussed how much worse it could have been. Discussed changes tot he equipment. blamed the spill on the fact that we were all wearing nice clothes and shoes. Biodiesel hates nice shoes. (the spill was a total freak accident, and the spill containment/secondary containment did what it was supposed to).

Ran ‘home’ and shoveled out the inbox for hours. Ugh.

Up next week:
Advanced Topics class the next two days
possible visit to an Old Order Mennonite farmer who makes biodiesel in an Appleseed (they use it in tractors, and no, he doesn’t have to go far to collect oil (a problem for non-car-drivers) as there’s a big oil source nearby)
probable visit to another organic farmer in NY State to get his system running (?)
possible trailer upgrade thanks to the same farmer’s connections
heading to New Hampshire to catch up with Dorn and teach the farm-scale biodiesel class at his place

I’m teaching a biodiesel workshop in Lee, New Hampshire- somewhat near Dover and Portsmouth, NH.

The workshop site is a farm which has been hosting a biodiesel co-op for three years, and has built some impressive small-farm biodiesel production equipment inspired by Argentinian farm-scale biodiesel processors (theirs are somewhat of a hybrid of Appleseed systems and larger-scale techniques involving methanol recovery). They have also grown oilseed in conjunction with nearby UNH as experimentation in oil yields for farmers making their own fuel.

The class will cover homebrewing basics but will also have a good tour of the farm-scale biodiesel equipment and will address the special issues that that scale brings up.

Lee, NH

Sept 22-23

10-4 each day

$120

For more information and to register, see www.girlmark.com/tour

Topics covered in the homebrew production side of the class:

-biodiesel/SVO/solvent thinning options and history, biodiesel chemistry, testing oil (titration and water testing), making test batches, an overview of equipment, a chance to build your own reactor at the end of Sunday’s class, quality control factors that influence conversion quality, quality testing, mistwashing and other water washing options, breaking emulsion, two-stage base biodiesel, waste water and glycerine disposal, irrigating with waste wash water, neutralizing wash water, water reuse, common pitfalls, hands-on experience recovering from failed batches and emulsion, safety, dewatering oil, spill prevention, burning glycerine for energy, hydronic heating or solar heating of your biodiesel system

Info about the host’s sunflower trials:

http://www.biodieselmagazine.com/article-print.jsp?article_id=1432
http://extension.unh.edu/News/SunDiesl.htm
http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060903/REPOSITORY/609030353/1012/NEWS
http://www.uvm.edu/vtvegandberry/Pubs/Final%20Report%205-15-2007.pdf

Phew, I finally made it to the East Coast with no problems. Tom drove out with me on what he called the ‘cross-country death march’- we just drove for three days, alternating sleeping and driving. It was even weirder than flying crosscountry- I feel a bit like I went to sleep in Sacramento and awoke in Pennsylvania three days later with some bad dreams about I-80, convenience stores and buying B11 at truck stops. Somehow since the last trip across I-80 the country’s changed- there are signs for E-85 everywhere, B-20 in a few places, and so much more of the country is smothered with soy fields. Pennsylvania has been swallowed by soy and corn since I was last here for any period of time 7 years ago- supposedly mostly as a result of biofuels. I’m not sure if that’s better or worse than what they were doing before - cows and hay, which doesn’t seem like a high-dollar proposition for farmers. But it’s bizarre to see the change. We started counting the fields while driving around here this week- soy, soy, soy, corn, followed by corn, corn, soy, development, more soy, soy, corn. As usual I experienced my vast horror at seeing Iowa soil wasted on corn and soy- Iowa has the ‘black earth’ phenomenon that Ukraine and a couple of other places on Earth do. Ukrainians traditionally used this fertile soil to develop an intensively diverse agriculture. Iowa could be the California of Midwest or Eastern agriculture, but we waste it growing industrial corn monoculture instead.

The prep for the trip was insane- I don’t think I’ve worked that hard in my whole life. About Day 2 of the trip I started to really hate the trailer, again. It’s still too small. Arrrggh. Tom’s really sick of hearing about the trailer- it took over my life for the past few months- and keeps suggesting I just buy a larger one on the East Coast.