Hi Darryl
>Keith, well done!
:-) Thankyou! Methinks 'tis nothing special though.
>Super stuff and great information in the on-going
>wars of words regarding home brew quality.
Yes, a major reason for doing it. At least it is just a war of words,
no DU and cluster bombs. I wonder though if maybe we should be
regarding Big Central biofuels and what they do and think and the
apocryphal rumours they spread about homebrewers even when it's
debunked and they turn out to be the culprits instead, and the way
lawmakers and bureaucrats automatically defer to them and take their
side of it, the whole thing, in the same way as I'm suggesting
Americans should regard their voting system and Congress and so on.
That is, disregard them. Along with the Pimentels and George Monbiots
and Mae-won Ho's et al while we're at it. What harm has Pimentel ever
done to independent local-level biofuel brewers? If he hurts the NBB
and ADM, well so what? Why not just ignore the guy?
As another list member said (who was it??), just go round them, build
their systems out and your own systems in and don't be too bothered.
Give it all a scroot every now and then to see how they're getting
along with the fuel miles issue, for instance, among others.
>For my own clarification, all these tests were on acid-base process
>batches, correct?
Yes.
>Any chance of getting similar testing done on
>single-stage base method, just for comparison purposes?
Not much chance with this current set-up. I have to use it sparingly,
and it has to be a useful part of what we're researching. Changing
the process wouldn't have any bearing on that and I couldn't offer
any rationale for it.
All best
Keith
>Darryl
>
>Keith Addison wrote:
> > Greetings all
> >
> > I mentioned a few months ago that we're doing some research
> > collaboration with a local biofuels company here. They have biodiesel
> > projects running in Japan and Southeast Asia, along with a business
> > partnership with the chemistry professor at a major Japanese
> > technical university in Tokyo. So we get access to the university's
> > chemistry department GC, the Gas Chromatograph ("gaskro" in
> > Japanese), to test our biodiesel, among other things.
> >
> > They ran the first test for us last October, of a sample of our
> > normal full-scale production run WVO biodiesel, not test-batch stuff.
> > The chemistry department's comment on the report sheet was "Very
> > clean biodiesel!" The cleanest they'd seen, they said later - how do
> > we make such good biodiesel from WVO?
> >
> > Anyway, it showed an ester content of 98.5%, compared with the EU
> > standard requirement of minimum 96.5%, very good completion.
> >
> > So this is what you can achieve by using the quality tests at the
> > Journey to Forever website Biodiesel section to guide your processing.
> >
> > It's very close, but not perfect - despite the high ester content,
> > both the monoglyceride and diglyceride levels were higher than the EU
> > standards specify. Completion is the crucial factor, and with such a
> > good completion rate the excess MGs and DGs didn't bother me a lot,
> > and it could easily be adjusted anyway.
> >
> > This is an advantage of acid-base processing. Not for novices! we all
> > warn - unless you know what you're at, when you hit that inevitable
> > problem batch you'll be thrown by all the extra variables in the
> > acid-base process and you won't know how to troubleshoot it. So learn
> > the basics first.
> >
> > Truly. But when you do know the basics, all those variables make it
> > easy to identify where a problem lies and very easy to fine-tune the
> > process. There are more controls you can use.
> >
> > We just got the results of a further series of GC tests of three
> > production-run samples which demonstrate this quite well. The figures
> > show a curve.
> >
> > 21 Oct 2005 - Handmade Projects biodiesel 1st test results
> >
> > 10 April 2006 - Results of Handmade Projects samples #1 Biodiesel, #2
> > Biodiesel, #4 Biodiesel (sample #3 was not biodiesel)
> >
> > Standard - European biodiesel standard EN 14214 of 2003.
> >
> > Ester content (% mass)
> > EN 14214: >96.5
> > 1st test: 98.5
> > #1 Biodiesel: 98.49
> > #2 Biodiesel: 98.73
> > #4 Biodiesel: 99.09
> >
> > Monoglyceride (% mass)
> > EN 14214: <0.8
> > 1st test: 0.93
> > #1 Biodiesel: 0.77
> > #2 Biodiesel: 0.65
> > #4 Biodiesel: 0.62
> >
> > Diglyceride (% mass)
> > EN 14214: <0.2
> > 1st test: 0.57
> > #1 Biodiesel: 0.74
> > #2 Biodiesel: 0.61
> > #4 Biodiesel: 0.28
> >
> > Triglyceride (% mass)
> > EN 14214: <0.2
> > 1st test: 0
> > #1 Biodiesel: 0
> > #2 Biodiesel: 0
> > #4 Biodiesel: 0
> >
> > Sample #4 has very good completion and the MG level is now well
> > within spec, but the DG level is still 0.08% too high.
> >
> > We'd planned a further two tests and we'll go ahead with those now (I
> > just ran the batch for the first sample today). These tests will
> > vanish that excess 0.08% of DGs, and teach me much besides.
> >
> > I wouldn't have done all this if I didn't have such good access to
> > the gaskro. If someone had told me we had good completion, well above
> > spec, but the MGs and DGs were too high I'd have gone straight to the
> > second of the two tests I'm doing now and fixed it in one step. But
> > it's great to be able to get such accurate confirmation of how these
> > variables work. We'd never be able to afford these gaskro tests here
> > any other way, testing just one sample at commercial lab rates costs
> > US$6,000.
> >
> > Anyway, it's further confirmation that the backyard brewers' cheapo
> > kitchen-sink quality tests will indeed guide you to a high-quality
> > product, and that the one-step-at-a-time learning path is the way to
> > go.
> >
> > The tests are here, by the way:
> >
> > Biodiesel and your vehicle: Quality testing
> > http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_vehicle.html#quality
> >
> > And the how-to:
> >
> > Make your own biodiesel: "Where do I start?"
> > http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_make.html#start
> >
> > Best
> >
> > Keith
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