Diary of a Mad Scientist

I spent a bunch of time on the East Coast trip in meetings with various potential collaborators about the small producer plant I’ve designed. While I was there, I got a consulting job offer from a small fleet owner who wants to produce fuel in-house with basically the same size system as I am working on- so, allegedly, I now have a pilot project to test out some of these designs, and they’ve got an in-house chemist already and know what they’re getting into.

While I was on the East Coast I had a couple of very productive meetings with other small producers. With one of them, I’m working closely with on our similar designs, and with the other, I may be doing some minor consulting/testing later in the spring. Having the gas chromatograph really opens some doors to thorough testing of various aspects of this production technology- I sat down with one of the guys and worked through some lists of potential problems we expect to be sticking points for our two technologies, and we drew up somewhat of a test protocol for experiments around those problems. I also managed quite by accident to ‘fire up’ a potential investor- investment was not something I was really looking for, but this is a biodiesel-industry-informed person, and a real smart businessman, so it was interesting brainstorming with him about the direction my project could take.) It’s all quite exciting and I learned a tremendous amount on that trip.

I got home and got on the phone for another round of discussions with farmers. I’ve been talking to farmers large and small about two different types of systems- my 10,000 gallon a month commercial-type design which I’d like to deploy, and, if it works as planned, market myself as a consultant/technology provider for, and an unrelated smaller, open-source design for the ‘upsized homebrew’ system similar to what we’ve been using in co-ops around the country. The small open-source system is what I think of as the ‘CSA plant’- community supported agriculture farms tend to be smaller organic vegetable or fruit growers who use one or three tractors, own a couple of market trucks, and not spend a lot of money running irrigation equipment. Their needs are really different than the larger farms.

For the larger 10,000 gallon per month system, I’ve had an idea for a while to put together an R&D cost-sharing consortium for developing this system by collaborating with several farmers/fleets who want one. The theory is that 5 or so businesses buy in to offset the costs of the first pilot plant and to pay for some of the initial engineering studies required by regulatory agencies, and that the data gathered from the pilot plant phase makes it easier for the rest of them to build their systems later. The first farmer/fleet physically builds the pilot plant and gets to make the mistakes, with the risk offset by the others’ investment. I help with design and experimentation. The other owners of the consortium get the documentation to build their own , and everyone goes their separate ways after the pilot plant phase is complete. This of course might be more complicated than desired- working with multiple partners- farmers aren’t known for being good businessmen necessarily- they know farming and are not necessarily product development experts- and business collaboratives like this are tricky in general. I think I originally wrote about this here.

Today I was on the phone with a farmer in Kentucky who’s working on the CSA Plant type of system himself, I grilled him on the finer points of animal feed and the economics of oilseed production. He’s exploring sunflowers and thinking of buying this press: http://flinthillsdiesel.com/

Then I wrote several annoying letters to various other folks from the forums, pestering them about farm biodiesel production and trying to finagle meetings or phone conversations out of them. The beat goes on…

I went back and forth about whether to go to the NBB convention this week to drum up some enthusiasm for the project, or potential partners for the consortium.

It bothers me tremendously that there is currently a bit of a ‘circus’ atmosphere around small scale production- I get the impression for various reasons that there are a lot of people hawking systems that don’t work, or haven’t been adequately tested, and a lot of bad fuel continues getting out there from both small and large producers.

I think it’s extra bad in California where liberals are so supportive of ’sustainability’ that there’s a ready-made niche for anyone who markets their company as being part of the ’sustainability’ movement. If you’re an investor, do your homework. Research thoroughly. Get hard facts. Remember that EVERYBODY in biodiesel is singing an ‘ideals’ tune. Some of them are awfully good orators, and dishonest businessmen. This research is very difficult to do in several cases I know about in my state, and I"m sure that when it all shakes out there’ll be a lot of small investors who didn’t do their homework and who’ll lose their little life savings they’ve investing in some of these rather scary companies. On the other hand, several distributors and other players in the industry are running an honest business and losing money, or close to it, and yet supplying an important role as suppliers, advocates, educators- it’s difficult to tell who’s legitimate as an investment, and who isn’t. Im sure they’ll all be at the NBB and this weekend’s CBCC hawking their wares and promoting themselves as leaders of the local, sustainable biodiesel movement.

It reminds me of the tax credit era solar thermal manufacturers, who did tremendous damage to the solar hot water equipment industry by providing bad products at a time when tax credits incentives worked the wrong way. High energy prices, biodiesel tax incentives, idealism on behalf of consumers, and poor quality control are inspiring the same thing in my opinion at the moment, and for various reasons I think I can do better sitting it out with the farmer/fleet focus until some of the BS shakes out, which I expect would happen in the next year or two. I have the feeling that the farmers/fleet customers are going to be a little more pragmatic than some of the other industry players I"ve encoutered. Or so I hope.

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