Since Mr Noyes had to go and start talking about 'second hand reports' of downed vehicles and then not name names, or what part of the country, or whose homemade fuel, I'm going to go into what I know about this.
I'm sorry, Graham, but I'm a homebrewer who lives in the West, I've been following homebrew biodiesel developments since before the days of Josh and Kaia (thanks to Fat of the Land) and since I am someone who spends probably as much time doing 'fulltime work with biodiesel users' as you do, I have to 'call bullshit' on these 'reports' of downed vehicles due to homebrew biodiesel setting back the Great Work that industry is doing promoting biodiesel. Unless you name names, give us an actual place, not just a generic 'in the west' of myth, I'm going to keep believing that someone's making this up... or jumping on a vague rumor because it fits what they want to hear. Downed vehicles.. clogged vehicles... I hope it's just something like some story about WVO-derived biodiesel gelling in winter, that got blown out of proportion in the industry to a story of 'clogged vehicles'- and I hope it's not some completely out of wack outright myth or lie or distortion. If you're talking about the Southwest, there hasn't been any significant amount of homebrew, 'offspec' or not, being made there (I've lived there part of the year for the past three years, and have been promoting homebrewing during parts of that time). The word is only getting out down there in the past few months about biodiesel, homebrew or not. I doubt that there was some enterprising homebrew bootlegger selling bad fuel to enough of a crowd of interested buyers to generate these 'reports'. Or shall we just call them myths? I do. If you';re talking about the Northwest, there's a bit more of a chance that I've missed something and haven't heard these 'reports', but I've spent a significant amount of time there too, including spending time promoting biodiesel homebrew. I'm friends with Mike Pelly for christ's sake, and have been following a lot of who 'the names'- the people promoting biodiesel up there- are, at least in Oregon and Washington. In the Northwest there's a HUGE interest in biodiesel, a huge market, and a lot of people trying to organize themselves to get in on it. There are commercial plants going up, or recently built, there are demonstration projects in school bus systems, there are several kinds of co-ops up there, and homebrewers and their 'off-spec' fuel have been the ones promoting it, for years. All of this is part of a very accepting 'market' for biodiesel in the Northwest, and a relatively educated market at that. I haven't heard anything about industry having to go in and repair damage done by some unscrupulous homebrewer. So that leaves California. Aah, the state I live in. Well, there's so much demand for biodiesel up in Northern California that people doing promoting, education, and publicity can hardly keep up with it. Every time we do some kind of public event promoting biodiesel, it's swamped with attendees, the Ecology Center gets dozens or more inquiries per week from individuals trying to find out where to buy it, more info about it, etc. there's biodiesel-related initiatives in several towns to promote fleet use of the fuel. I've been involved with biodiesel in california for about three years as well, and I've yet to hear any 'reports of downed vehicles' nor see anything but the most intense interest and enthusiasm on behalf of the public. And I believe that there's several biodiesel production plants in southern california, and they stay pretty dang busy, in spite of numerous homebrewers up and down the state. So where in the west are you finding 'large quantities of offspec homebrew that was sold' and messed up these cars? Cause I've got my ear to the ground in the West pretty good and I'm not hearing these reports... or are they rumors... or are you spreading them? (whether intentionally or inadvertently) Maria 'Mark' Alovert Oakland, CA > I did not fabricate tales of vehicle problems from homebrew to denigrate > DIY's but to share my experience. There were a signficant number of > reports of downed vehicles in a particular area (not destroyed, just > clogged) of the country last year that I learned about through my > full-time work with biodiesel users in the West. I am not going to get > more specific than that because I learned about these vehicles > second-hand (though from several different people) and I have no direct > personal knowledge regarding what happened. Frankly I would think that > other members of this group would have heard similar reports. At any > rate, this certainly does not prove homebrew inferior but was intended to > show what the industry is concerned about. My personal opinion is that > this part of the country was delayed in the acceptance of biodiesel > because of these problems. This would be the case whether the biodiesel > was commercially-produced or home-brewed. But the industry knows where > to point the finger when commercial biodiesel is out of spec and how to > respond. Homebrew, as it has been pointed out, is more elusive and > difficult to control. > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> ˇFREE Health Insurance Quotes-eHealthInsurance.com http://us.click.yahoo.com/1.voSB/RnFFAA/46VHAA/9bTolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Biofuels at Journey to Forever http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuel at WebConX http://webconx.green-trust.org/2000/biofuel/biofuel.htm List messages are archived at the Info-Archive at NNYTech: http://archive.nnytech.net/ To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
