Hola Biofuelers,
Today was the first day of a four part Biodiesel class at the Ecology
center in Berkley. There was about twenty four people atending with Girl
Mark teaching, and her trustworthy assistant 'Methman' (ie. Jeff) in tow.
Below is a blow by blow of the first day. BTW, also got some pictures
that if Keith would like to post or have a page dedicated to the class,
just let me know. Didn't get a chance to use my Girlfriends Digital so
these will have to be processed in the coming weeks. Might just post them
on OFOTO with a little narration.
Regards,
James Slayden
9:30am - lost my way in to the location and ended up almost in Concord,
Ca. Had to turn around on the 980 freeway and rely on some
reverse direction intuition.
9:45am - Arrived at the Ecology Center in Berkley and a small group for
the class started forming. Interesting I thought it would be
more packed, but I think that people are more interested in the
finished product than actually creating Biodiesel.
10am - Girl Mark was running late so I spent some time looking at all
the sustainable information available at the Ecology Center. If
your ever in Berkley definitely stop by the center just for all
the other goodies!
10:15ish - Girl Mark shows up!! We get to helping unload and distribute
her BD 'zine' and gear. We introduce ourselves and explain why
we are taking the class. Class size is around 24. The price
per class was great!! $15 - $60 sliding scale, almost a like a
free will donation. You pay either at each class or for the
whole series, very Berkley. =)
10:**am - Girl Mark starts in on the lecture portion of with some
history of diesel, biodiesel, and some other good factiods. She
makes a batch of blender BD with 'Methman' doing the dirty work.
Girl Mark drills into us the safety precautions that should be
taken. This will not be the first time this will be said. ;-)
12:30pm - Lunch!! Not that your interested, but I had a tofu scramble at
a little cafe down the steet with some fellow class members. I
find out that what seems to be the concensus - that this the
first time for most of us.
1:15pm - Girl Mark dives right into titration!! Guess she figured we
need to get the difficult stuff out of the way first. We split
up into 4 groups and started practicing titration. It looked so
easy when Girl Mark did it!!?? I now know how important
measuring is and how easily it can be screwed up. Most of the
members of our group titrate and come up with a consistant
1.75ml. The groups compare the numbers and we head out to the
parking lot to do a biger batch.
??:??pm - Time flys when your having fun. We were going to do a methoxide
batch, then Jeff thought he had some KOH and wanted to try that,
so the blender batch of methoxide was scrapped and was made into
another blender BD batch. Then Jeff found out that he forgot
the KOH and we went back the the original plan. Some of the
class members volunteered to be 'Methman' for some of the
methoxide mixing which was kewl. I was a little scared of the
chemicals so I passed on the opportunity (my own personal
deamon). I will go for it next time though!! Need to get over
that .....
3:15pm Class was suppose to be over, but since we started late, and
lots of questions put us over the time. I stayed to see the
larger batch being mixed in small scale processor. Half the
class had left (pity), so it was a chance to get up and close
with the processing. BTW, Girl Mark brought two batch style,
mixer processors made out of very convient and inexpensive
materials (metal drums) easily found/made. Not being that
machanically inclined, it's not very intimidating to see how
simple the processor can be made. We talked a little bit about
the processors and will go further into it later in the class.
It was a great first day and I think we all got a great start in feeling
comfortable with the process, titration, and working with the chemicals.
It was a big suprise to most of us that it really is a simple process and
quite amazing that we can make our own fuel.
More to follow in the coming weeks (and pics).
Biofuel at Journey to Forever:
http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html
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