Keith, Graham, and everyone, Some ideas as a follow-up. If NBB and others are concerned that consumers will be put off by poor quality biodiesel and/or the improper use/preparation for use of good quality biodiesel, then perhaps someone should put together a buying guide. A while back someone, Tom Leue I believe, talked about publishing a comprehensive how-to guide for practicing and would-be homebrewers. [As an aside, does that term “homebrew” have a clear definition?] But a guide for people looking to use biodiesel may prove more helpful in terms of reducing the uncertainty associated with trying a new fuel. After all, dedicated homebrewers will likely persevere, whereas tentative first-time consumers may be easily put off.
Such a guide should cover basic facts (environmental, chemical, feedstocks, etc.) about biodiesel, how to prepare your vehicle for biodiesel use, and how to transition to that use. As Steve Spence pointed out, the solvent properties of biodiesel can release petro-diesel accumulations and clog fuel filters, etc. This should all be explained and made accessible to the first-time buyer. It should also cover how to “buy” fuel—who makes and/or distributes it locally, what to look for, what questions to ask, what to avoid, and so on. This would require agreement on some standards. At present, could a consumer ask a small producer, “How do you test your fuel?” and receive a universally acceptable answer? What would it be? ASTM standards? Gas chromatography? Finally, such a guide ideally should address issues of liability and warranty. I know that most (all?) of this information is out there, certainly on Keith’s site and elsewhere. But it needs to be put in a comprehensive, easy to use format, and distributed. The point is, you want to reach people who aren’t out looking for alternative fuels. Perhaps some of you have read “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell. He talks about idea “epidemics” and how new ideas catch on and become widespread, or don’t. Right now, biodiesel is popular only with “innovators”—those who are willing to take a risk and adopt a technology because they believe that it is the best thing to do. We need to move beyond that to those who are more risk averse and less interested in the “right” thing and more interested in adopting a promising technology, the so-called “early movers.” Once these groups buy into biodiesel, then the mainstream follows. The big-picture questions such as whether there are sufficient feed-stocks to replace a significant portion of the diesel market are really less important at this point. The market will sort things out; the point is to push the expansion of biodiesel as far as it can go. Nobody knows where that frontier is and we never will except by pushing forward. A major problem, as I see it, is that no one, including the NBB, is conducting a major promotional campaign for biodiesel. We all know that there are a variety of “angles” through which you could make biodiesel appealing: energy security, enhanced farm revenues, pollution reduction, cost savings (rather than using natural gas in school bus fleet conversions, for example), municipal waste reduction, strengthening local economies, etc. etc. But the information needs to be packaged, targeted, presented and disseminated effectively. Homebrewers can decry the evils of “Big Soy,” and the NBB lament the perils of homebrew till the cows come home, each side safe in its parochial domain, but it ain’t gonna change nuthin’. If the two sides cannot find a way to cooperate, the cause of biodiesel suffers. The ball is in both courts. NBB needs to clean up its act, for all the reasons mentioned in this forum. And homebrewers/small producers, IMO need to organize to present a coherent voice. It’s unrealistic to expect the NBB to treat with hundreds of independent producers individually. Some further actions to consider: 1) The above mentioned “guide to purchasing biodiesel.” 2) Again, develop some universally agreed-upon standards, including testing procedures. I may draw flak for saying so (…pause…while I don my flak jacket…), but I didn’t find the “Why Standards are Important” article so unreasonable. Korbitz is entirely correct, is he not, in asserting that engine manufacturers are going to demand some sort of fuel-quality standard. And I think it’s reasonable to be wary of a producer who can’t describe or characterize his/her product. The rub lies in how one defines “describe” and “characterize.” For example, if producer couldn’t tell me what kind of feedstock he was using, that would raise a flag. What we have to do is to make achieving that standard possible for producers of all sizes. Keith, the link you provided to the Leonardo Test Kit was a great example of accessible testing. Remember, too, that a standard can include lots of other things besides just fuel quality. You can do an LCA (life cycle assessment) for biodiesel production, which could, for example, measure embodied energy. Such an assessment would favor WVO stock and local production. By the way, it’s interesting that NBB-titled article “Perils of the Homebrew” is really addressing potentially faulty production procedures, and not a general indictment of homemade biodiesel. It's almost a primer FOR the homebrewer. I find it telling that the NBB read it through their particular lens as describing inherent (irremediable?) flaws in homebrew. Or, more cynically, perhaps they just saw some stray “ammo” to load into their anti-small producer cannon. Either way, it’s shameful and, when you read carefully, fairly transparent propaganda. They really should remove that title. If I were Legge I’d be pretty ticked off. 3) Some sort of certification program? This has worked in organic agriculture pretty well (and yes I realize that it’s in danger of being co-opted by agribusiness via USDA so let’s not go there). But branding and labeling is a key to consumer assurance and acceptance, especially where there are many producers. Of course, there are a lot of obstacles to address and pitfalls to avoid, not the least of which is that the process be taken over by NBB. But at some point, as I wrote earlier, small producers are going to have to band together to make their voice(s) heard; a national cooperative or something similar. Sure, there are independent go it alone types who won’t want to participate, who won’t want to pay for the certification, and so on. But no matter. I have talked to organic farmers who are not certified because of the costs and paperwork. They sell locally, and as one woman put it, “My customers know me and know my food. They can come on the farm and see how I do things. They don’t need the official seal of approval.” Same goes for homebrewers who produce for a very local market. No certification mark is going to replace personal experience with the product and the producer. But when you move beyond the confines of your neighborhood and immediate community, commerce takes on a more complicated set of rules. best to all, thor ------------------------------------------------------ [Keith's post follows] ---------------------------------------------------- Message: 9 Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002 10:41:09 +0900 From: Keith Addison <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: A response to ... eh-hem.... Big Industry? was Re: BIG Hello Thor Thanks for this contribution, positive and constructive, and what we all should be doing. I also hope Graham doesn't bow out. Though I must say that what his "unique perspective" has mostly provided so far is a rather clear picture of why biodieselers tend to distrust "industry", and why some of us, including me, haven't got anywhere with trying to establish some common ground with industry, or at least with some sectors of it, though not others, and not for want of trying. Graham has done little here to allay people's suspicions, rather the opposite, as you can see. I'm sure his intentions are good, but that's about where it ends, his ideas of collaboration are clueless - laughable, as I said before, only it's not funny. He seems only to accomplish the opposite of his intentions. Currently there are two issues, both concerning him, and arriving from different directions: the first being the rumours of homebrewed BD causing widespread problems, presented as fact, and the second the unidentifiable and perhaps equally mythical party in Maine who allegedly got thumped for tax. The problem here is what I can only call industry arrogance - again, the fact that many (most?) in industry show no trace of this makes it that much less excusable. Graham (and others) have sought to protect and nurture biodiesel use and growth, all very laudable, and we do the same, at least as effectively in our area - but his ill-informed and prejudiced perception has been that what it needs protecting from is us. "The big fear of the biodiesel industry is that homebrewers are going to destroy the market." Hence all the warnings and apocryphal myths about the so-called "Perils of Home Brew", and the crashing failure to realize that, firstly, it's just not true, and second, that it has the opposite to the desired effect, it's bad news that travels far and doesn't die easily, as you point out, it gets distorted in the retelling, and makes people wary of biodiesel in general, from whatever source. This absolutely has to stop. IMO it does as much damage or more as we could ever do even if we did make crap fuel, which we don't. And it could almost be calculated to create a deep rift between our two sectors, though we both have the same aims and hopes. And that it has done. One (of several) reasons I hope Graham doesn't bow out, or whatever, is that he's in a very good position to try to repair some of this damage, if only he'll pause to consider the essential mutuality of any real collaborative effort. Obviously he wants to help, but he'll have to learn how, to reality of biofuelers will not change simply to fit his misconceptions about us, which in turn would do more harm than good anyway. Your points about the NBB and the EPA and their attitude to small producers, and the bureaucratic burden, are all very well-founded. There are signs they're beginning to change their ways, under pressure, but they need to do a lot more. As well as that, to get back to this "Perils of Home Brew" nonsense, it has rather a telling history. The original article was written by Frank Legge in Australia and published in a Biodiesel Association of Australia newsletter. They didn't send me that issue, though I subscribed, and their website is a mess - it lists the newsletters but the links are dead, as is the index of all articles in Biodiesel News, and their search engine returns no hits. So I was unable to find it there and didn't know Legge had written it. Legge's headline on the piece was quite different: he'd called it "Biodiesel Concerns", and he didn't at all approve of the new headline given it apparently by the NBB, which for quite a long time featured it on the front page of their website, without Legge's signature. In this form it appeared to have been written by Werner Koerbitz of the Austrian Biofuels Institute, which is perhaps the EU's equivalent of the NBB, in a way. It was associated with a longer piece by Koerbitz called "Why Standards are Important", with dire warnings against, yes, the Perils of Home Brew. "Obviously every country has to go through the phase of enthusiastic home-brewed biodiesel." We're just an unfortunate phase, the sooner we grow out of it and leave it to the Big Guys the better for everybody. (Though we do have our uses.) Both articles are still to be found at the NBB: Why Standards are Important http://www.biodiesel.org/resources/reportsdatabase/reports/gen/gen-322.pdf (Werner Korbitz's article slamming homebrewers) Perils of Home Brew http://www.biodiesel.org/resources/reportsdatabase/reports/gen/gen-321.pdf (Frank Legge's piece, unsigned) Okay, so, in the interests of promoting and protecting the biodiesel cause, of mutuality, collaboration and cooperation amongst all interested parties, let's all now highlight it on our websites what a useless bunch of wasters and ne'er-do-wells the NBB, the ABI and industry are - plenty of good material available, never mind if it's all true or not, if we say so often enough we'll help to make it true, especially as our websites are rather more powerful and popular than their's are. Okay? Quite. Do we do this? Quite the opposite - the NBB, the ABI and indeed World Energy and its major property, NOPEC (OceanAir Environmental Fuels), are all featured at Journey to Forever and most of them at most other biofuelers' sites. You get the point. We cannot collaborate with them so long as they insist on promoting these fallacies and treat us with such disdain. While they continue to do that, their talk of collaboration amounts to little more than an attempt to coopt us. Once they change their ways, they'll find us willing enough. Until then, we'll go our own way doing what we do, which does NOT include screwing up the market with bad fuel, but DOES include promoting biodiesel use and biofuels issues at least as effectively as they do. Sure, we're not so good at lobbying, and they're not nearly as good at publicity. Obviously the two should be complementary. That that's too often not the case is not our doing. Regarding quality testing and ASTM, what's happening now is that homebrewers gain experience and skill, they use the excellent methods now available to them, they adopt good practices, they use the quality checks many people have developed, and then they compare the results with commercial BD and find it matches, or better. In previous discussions with industry people over cooperation I've several times mentioned that we could use some help with quality testing, and got no response - this despite the concerns of these same people that our allegedly poor-quality fuel causes problems. You'd think they'd be keen to help us with this, wouldn't you? Nope. It's all narrow, one-way thinking - what can they get out of us, for as little as possible in return. One thing that would be most useful is a simple and affordable completion test, such as this: http://koal.cop.fi/leonardo/leonardo.htm Select "Analysis", "Miscellaneous", "Test kit for Biodiesel" Transesterification Degree, Flash Point, Remains of catalyst. Quite a few people have tried to track this down without success. Wouldn't that be a useful thing to put only a very few of those soy check-off dollars into? Do something constructive to help biodieselers with their quality for a change instead of just spreading counter-productive BS - the biodieselers would certainly take it up, they're most interested in quality, and it would be appreciated, build some bridges. By the way, your two examples of perceived problems with poor-quality biodiesel could well have stemmed from industry - see Todd's information on the ODOT experience. >I can point to one local gross incidence of severe down time >accrued by ODOT road crews running biodiesel manufactured to ASTM >spec. Seems that the vendor failed to inform ODOT of the superior >solvent capacities of biodiesel, or at least the information was >not relayed to outposts and no measures were taken. Debris ridden >fuel was pumped from outpost distribution tanks into field >distribution tanks and eventually into vehicles. Needless to say >there were numerous early and extended lunches between mid to >late summer. This wasn't bad biodiesel but bad information - we ALWAYS warn people about that, as Steve just did. Graham didn't respond to Todd on this earlier, I've asked him again, but no response yet. I wonder if this might not be where all the industry stuff about poor-quality homebrew biodiesel doing harm comes from - from industry's bad information, not homebrewers at all. Thanks again Thor. regards Keith __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus – Powerful. Affordable. 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