Biodiesel Man uses processed vegetable oil that comes from restaurants such as Diegos, giving his exhaust the smell of a kitchen and the environment the break it deserves

Step by step, in eight short minutes, this enjoyable video with Biodiesel Man is educational and fun, taking you quickly through how biodiesel is made in your own garage.

Circumnavigating the planet in a biodiesel fueled powerboat, trying to break a world record and promoting the use of renewable energy the world over is what Earthrace is all about.

The biodiesel boat being used in Earthrace is a tri-hull wave piercing powerboat, which means that the front hull actually slips straight into a wave instead of going over it, giving it the advantage of a straight line and almost completely ignoring storm conditions.

Three hulls give the biodiesel boat a serious stability advantage and the knife-like nature with sleek rounded sides and top allow it to rocket through the waves much like a torpedo through water.All the high-tech naval architecture and craftsmanship blend the absolute latest in human seafaring speed technology with the latest trends in renewables; biodiesel.

The biodiesel boat will not merely break a world record for the sake of doing so, it is an attempt at enlightening the entire world to the effectiveness of renewable energy sources in todays fast paced electron flinging cybertech world.

Earthrace is programmed to tour for 18 months and visit over 60 of the globes greatest cities, promoting biofuels and raising awareness about more sustainable uses of our planets resources.

Earthrace is 24,000 nautical miles, in a powerboat, the current record stands at 75 days and was set by British boat Cable & Wireless in 98.

Earthrace is planning to beat that record by ten days, and mark the first time in history that an official UIM Powerboat is raced strictly on renewable fuel alone.

The biodiesel has non-toxic anti-foul engines that are low-emissions and the most efficient hull design available in the world for long-distant oceanic racing.

Earthrace will start from Barbados, go through the Panama Canal, across the orient to northern Africa and back finally to Barbados, breaking a world record and going down in history.

Biodiesel Boat and Earthrace are making a statement about how our world uses its resources, a statement that is long overdue to the sustainable world.

Is all algae biodiesel a sustainable solution? That is question that requires a serious investigation into all the different kinds of algae biodiesel are out on the market right now, and which ones develop fewer ecological footprints.

Researchers in the Utah State University Biofuels Program have begun to show how native algae from bioreactors is many times more sustainable than our current biofuel food crops.

USUs high-tech bioreactor multiplies the sunlight available in controlled favored conditions for effluent management systems in the agricultural industry, incrementing bioremediation and algae biomass production to 200 times what soybeans can provide.

Corn and soybeans can both be eaten and would provide a wider nutritional market if not compromised by biodiesel production, both as feedstock for animals as well as human consumption and are also subject to bad harvests.

Controlled environments such as those in algae bioreactors are not subject to bad harvests and remain sustainable for the economy year after year.

Lance Seefeldt, USU Biofuels Program:

“For soybeans, you get about 48 gallons per acre. And right now, the idea is for algae, we could get about 10-thousand gallons of oil per acre. So you can see it’s about 200 times more oil per acre compared to soybeans.”

“For every square meter of parabolic dish, we can illuminate 10 square meters of algae surface.”

Byard Wood, USU Biofuels Program: “We’re talking about thousands of acres with these kinds of bioreactors to produce in quantity the amount of liquid fuel that we need to make an impact.”

According to reliable sources, PetroSun is already in its final stages of testing commercially scaled CO2 injecting bioreactors that produce algae biomass that can provide 30 times the production per acre of biodiesel than corn or soybeans.

Injecting CO2 means the bioreactor needs to be near a place that already produces CO2, in the case of PetroSun, major cities and industries that can capturethe needed gas would be more economical to avoid higher transportation costs, and allow self-reliance on a more practical scale.

Biodiesel, including algae biodiesel is considered CO2-neutral because in the process of making biodiesel it consumes CO2, either from the atmosphere or injected artificially, but in the act of usingBiofuel CO2 is then released, either into the atmosphere or into an artificial caption chamber.

The Ozone would not be repaired immediately or directly, but indirectly, over time if we just stopped using the trapped CO2 reserve that is in petroleum (from millions of years ago by the way; a time when the planet was totally covered by vegetation and could handle that kind of reptilian exhale).

If we really wanted to repair the ozone, we would have to confront another issue deforestation.

But algae forests under the ocean are responsible for 60% of the earths oxygen production; so by not polluting the seas with our dirty waterfrom our lakes and streams, we would be indirectly saving forests and forests of algae that would never be burned as biofuel.

A more centralized idea for algae biofuel as a sustainable solution would be a high-tech native pond scum biofuel bioreactor in the Sonora desert.

Not that a single centralized solution is the answer, but nonetheless the algae bioreactor project at USU would leave far fewer ecological footprints in the long run do to the quantitative amount of sunlight provided in the desert.

The Sonora desert is divided almost in the middle by the Mexican-American boarder and represents an opportune location for either bioreactor or wild algae production.

If only 15,000 square miles of the Mexican side were cultivated in algae bioreactors, it could potentially be enough to pay Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) growing debt and turn Mexico into one of the most wealthiest nations over night.

As far fetched as that claim might sound, doing the math of ongoing research in bioreactors has already shown promise among specialists studying the Sonora desert on US soil.

UNH.edu:

We found that to replace all transportation fuels in theUS, we would need 140.8 billion gallons of biodiesel (a year), or roughly 19 quads (one quad is roughly 7.5 billion gallons of biodiesel). To produce that amount would require a landmass of almost 15,000 square miles. To put that in perspective, considerthat the Sonora desert in the southwestern US comprises 120,000 square miles. Enough biodiesel to replace all petroleum transportation fuels (in the USA) could be grown in 15,000 square miles, or roughly 12.5 percent of the area of the Sonora desert (note for clarification – I am not advocating putting 15,000 square miles of algae ponds in the Sonora desert. This hypothetical example is used strictly for the purpose of showing the scale of land required). That 15,000 square miles works out to roughly 9.5 million acres – far less than the 450 million acres currently used for crop farming in the US, and the over 500 million acres used as grazing land for farm animals.

The leading research program in biodiesel from algae production between 1978 and 1996 was the Aquatic Species Program (ASP) and their results were well documented in July of 1998 by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

In the first three quarters of 2006 Mexico consumed roughly 10,664,000 US gallons of diesel a day, while still back in 2004 the US was consuming on the average, a little over 164,000,000 US gallons of diesel a day.

With all the free trade agreements Mexico has made in recent years (like NAFTA), and a distinct difference in diesel consumption between the two nations, it would be safe to assume that if Michael Briggshypothetical situation (above quote) is true, that would leave Mexico with at least an extra 153,000,000 US gallons of biofuel per day to sell to anybody in 2006 if they had used 15,000 square miles of their side of the Sonora desert to build sustainable algae bioreactors and refineries in 2005. Wow!

Well, all those hypothetical situations, hypothetical math equations, developed research and commercial organizations go to show us, just how much biofuel based on algae alone could change the world we live in by the end of the decade.

However regrettable; it is highly doubtful that any country with such excess algae biomass production would ever logically consider breeding algae just to save the ozone layer from our insane daily consumption, but that is the point to be seen, bioremediation of the earth goes beyond CO2-neutral biofuels.

But this kind of wishful thinking helps us really see what it would take to be a more sustainable solution; algae biodiesel cuts down the current ecological footprints made by using petrol CO2 reserves, but would never erase them permanently.

The question seems to be, who is going to catch hold of the fish first? Will all nations just go self-sufficient in their current forms of transportation and then stop there? All major nations seem seriously interested in the potentials of biodiesel based on algae such as wild pond scum.

Algae biodiesel as a sustainable solution would mean an overabundance of algae production and the replenishing of our undersea algae forests in an attempt at creating a more healthy and ecologically responsible world for the children of our childrens children.

More:
Biodiesel from Algae

While pond scum is still technically too small to be either plant or animal they are still traditionally seen as plants, due to their photosynthetic nature, consumption of CO2 and release of oxygen.

Bioreactors and open ponds are different methods of raising algae, and the term pond scum biodiesel refers more to the wild/native algae collected from open ponds rather than algae collected from a CO2 injected climate controlled bioreactor.

Pond scum biodiesel would be an easy to harvest crop for dairy farmers, paper or meat industries interested in bio-remediation of their waterways.

Anyone interested in Effluent Management Systems (EMS) would be interested in harvesting raw biomass from what has traditionally been a stream, lake and waterway pollutant.

Aquaflow Bionomic Corporation has been pioneering this technology, in a low-tech fashion that is also cost effective.

ABC optimizes the ponds productive capacity, finds economical methods for harvesting pond algae allowing them to first exploit the available nutrients in the pond which causes bioremediation and lastly offers a third stage of water treatment leaving water in acceptable conditions to be discharged back into the aquifer.

This environmentally friendly cyanobacteria we call wild pond algae is still not yet a part of the US market, as of January 2007 but the gold rush for wild pond scum is already kicking into gear the world over, with entrepreneurs and venture capitalists from all over.

Australia jumped the gun in May of 2006 with their EMS project in Blenheim, Melborhough, piloted by ABC as the first wild pond scum biodiesel factory in the world.

Green Gold! Pond Scum Biodiesel is a practical and sustainable way to power combustion engines; its clean, safe, non-toxic and has no sulfur (a major plus).

According to some sources, wild pond scum biodiesel ABC in the US should have a pilot program by January of 2008 while bioreactor projects are already in final stages.

ABC offers a low-tech solution to bioremediation through native algae cultivation and could produce something like 1,440 US gallons of biodiesel per acre, thirty times what we get per acre of soybeans (48 gallons per acre).

If we remove the word wild and replace it with controlled pond scum environments; such as those used in the USU Biofuels Program, we could produce 200 times the biodiesel harvested per acre from soybeans.

USU Biofuels Program, with six million dollars in seed money has developed high-tech pond scum cultivation around farm effluents that are more efficient as bioremediators and produce thousands gallons more biomass than low-tech solutions can.

The USU program has also given birth to spin-offs with solids for methane gas production like Andigen, which can sustain the electricity for 100 homes with only single farms methane production.

With solar parabolic dishes on the roof and fiber-optics leading down to the contained ponds, every 1 square meter of dish space can illuminate 10 square meters of algae, surface, concentrating sunlight many times over that of natural, low-tech lighting.

Utah is positioning itself already to be a major player in this kind of high-tech (bioreactor) controlled pond scum biofuel, intending to become cost competitive within two years.

Pond Scum Biodiesel seems a growing trend among agriculturists nations around the globe, both for the low-tech and high-tech solutions.

The solution that is more sustainable will depend on the economical and industrial demands of the nation at the time, but the higher-tech a renewable energy source goes, the more ecological footprints it tends to make in the initial phases of construction.

The interesting side of this high-tech solution is the long-term use of such bioremediation technology and its quantifying energy production that minimizes greater land use in the production pond scum biofuel.

Pond Scum Biofuel is being more understood by the masses everyday, and the more it is used, the more it is defined as a sustainable way to deal with our energy crises world over.

Tyson produces about 2.3 billion pounds of chicken fat annually from its poultry plants. That’s about 300 million gallons that could be converted to fuel. – Delewareonline

Further reading: Animal Fats Perform Well in Biodiesel (Adobe pdf format)

Inspired by a growing demand for cleaner ways to drive, Wildwind tapped the Bay Area’s sustainable biodiesel community for people to pose for the first Women of Biodiesel calendar. – Common Ground

Purchase a Women of Biodiesel Calender here

Ormat promises to produce a new biodiesel fuel that promises to require no mixing with petrol.

Ormat has over forty years of collective experience in locally generating power through geothermal heat resources, as well as solar power and biomass.

As a 60 million US$ dollar venture, this higher quality biodiesel fuel should offer new solutions to a problem that is as old as the race for the black blood of the earth itself.

Ormat is involved in what has become an ongoing race for sustainability.

In research and development alone, Ormat will invest 13.5 million US$ dollars using between 35 to 50 million US$ dollars on construction of the first production facility, within the next three years.

Biofuels for countries such as the US, Brazil and Germany are where the market promises the most incentives at the moment.

From alkyl esters, processing of biodiesel fuel, development of production processes, construction to operation of the production facilities, Ormat plans to do it all and make worthy their motto of keeping in balance with our natures planet.

ORMAT TECHNOLOGIES, INC.
6225 Neil Road, Suite 300
Reno, Nevada
89511-1136

Well, whether you be an off-the-grider living backwoods, an honest hardworking urban dweller with a family, a weekend camper, or just looking for something with a lot of room for friends and family either in the city or outback, Jeep Liberty is a choice that sports style as well as practicality.

And not merely for those who like to rumble in both urban and rural atmospheres, the Jeep Liberty has a special quality for urban environmentalist families as well the diesel engine.

The 2.8-liter Turbo diesel engine on the Jeep Liberty produces 160 horsepower at 3,800 rpm.

With 295 pounds-feet of torque at 1,800 rpm, that makes for an all-purpose on/off road vehicle with style, class and practicality.

Standard Jeep Liberty engines however, have a 3.7-Liter V6 Engine; including the Sport, Sport 65^thAnniversary Edition, Limited, Renegade and Sport Special Edition models.

All models are 4×2 to make this hybrid on and off road jeep the future of todays renewable biofuel society.

Diesel engines using petroleum fossil fuels consume around 60 billion gallons of petroleum diesel per year according to statistics from the Department of Energy.

While less energy efficient gasoline engines consume around 120 billion gallons of petroleum fossil fuels per year.

Replacing that amount of consumption with soybean biodiesel production however, would not be possible for self-stainable purposes.

With our nations current use of cropland, soy production would need to use a plot of land twice the size of our nation itself.

The United States uses 450 million acres of land for producing crops at the moment, the majority of which is actually used to support the meat industry with animal feed.

Another 580 million acres of land is used for grazing those same animals. Together, that comes to almost half the 2.3 billion acres within the US alone, of which merely 3% is urban space, around 66 million acres.

If it is supposed that the current gasoline engine is 35% less energy efficient than diesel engines and with the change to biodiesel, replaced gradually over time by diesel engines, our nation would need to produce something like 140.8 billion gallons of biodiesel to operate every single car and truck (both gasoline and diesel) in operation today.

In order to completely replace petroleum as a source of combustion fuel in our country and be totally self-reliant, we would need to produce these vegetable oil crops ourselves.

The best plants for biodiesel feedstocks are those efficient at converting solar energy into chemical energy. Certain types of algae have proven suitable for our nations needs, some with oil strains as high as 50%.

Algae can be grown cheaply in saltwater ponds out in the middle of the desert or even more efficiently in proprietary photobioreactors (which solve a lot of the problems encountered in open ponds for a few more dollars on the initial investment).

Another interesting factor with algae production is the possibility of using human sewage or other waste products such as polluted streams from fertilizer run off, to feed the algae with nutrients.

Algae could be produced anywhere in the country using inexpensive photobioreactors (still in the design stages) at the same rate as open ponds in the middle of the desert, but with the advantage of catching many of our different pollutants and waste products (such as industrial waste) and converting it into a useful feedcrop for biodiesel production.

This aspect of bioremediation is what makes biodiesel from algae all that more desirable to the nation in terms of sustainability concepts, as it kills two problems with the same stone and completes the thermodynamic cycle in a far more sustainable way.

If only 15,000 miles of the Sonora desert were used (that is 12.5% of its landmass), the nations need for biodiesel could be sustained easily on algae based vegetable oil alone.

This is, taking into account of course, that all current on the road gasoline engines as well as diesel were all powered by biodiesel alone, in our country, without any petroleum consumption whatsoever.

That not only answers our problem with land-space for production, but also uses bioremediation as a fertilizer for feedcrops of algae.

If algae production for biofuels is used intensively in conjunction with bioremediation, our countries economy would become the most self-sustainable for its size in the entire world, and still have fuel product left over to export if desirable.

Biodiesel from algae is an option that we have at the moment, one of the best. One that stimulates our nations self-reliance and sustainability, keeping away from the dependence on foreign resources as well as away from undesirable foreign politics.

Related:
Department of Energy – Biodiesel From Algae (PDF File)
Greenfuelonline – Green Fuel White Papers
Michael Briggs – Widescale Biodiesel Production from Algae

Soy biodiesel in Iowa is beginning to really propel the local farming community and help reduce the dependence on foreign petroleum products.

When people think of renewable energy sources, biodiesel is one of the first alternatives in their minds for replacing the current demand on the petroleum industry.

And to that thought as early as 1993 the US industry has been investing in soy biodiesel.

But is soy biodiesel the one and only answer? No, not THE answer, but certainly a big PART of the answer.

At the moment our world has grown far too big to be run only on soy biodiesel. For instance, if the United States were to rely purely on the internal production of soy biodiesel to meet current oil demands, the country would need a landmass twice the current size of the continental US alone.

And that makes the production of soybeans just for biodiesel alone, a task with dynamic economical and political repercussions to say the least.

With soybean production, people can have a variety of food products replaced and/or enhanced for a healthier diet, making for big competition with the oil industry.

The basic question with soy biodiesel is the same question that inflicts most biodiesel products derived from consumables; should we eat it or put it in the gas tank?

Obviously at the moment it IS possible to use soy biodiesel to reduce the harsher impacts on the American economy with a blending of only 2%, but it cant be the end all solution.

For one, oil is a very limited resource and two, the more we blend into the gas tank the more acres we will need to plant.

If current engine designs were to adapt to higher blends, the U.S. would not be able to sustain such a market on the current internal production of soybeans alone. And would indefinitely rely once again on foreign supply, this time however it would be vegetable fuels rather that fossil fuels.

Political and economical situations can change radically with more investment in soy biodiesel, and that is a positive step in progress.

The opposition to this however comes mostly from environmentalist groups that fear the agricultural sector is not prepared to embody safe and sustainable practices in the cultivation of new crops such as soybeans.

Sure enough, in the planting of coffee, sugar cane and cotton, the world has seen large environmental disasters from unsustainable agriculture.

While the level of disasters has slowed somewhat, crops that pose or have posed political and economical worldwide influences such as those that cotton, coffee and sugar all once did, also tend to draw farmers out of the woodwork.

This doesnt mean that they are not prepared to be farmers, but rather not prepared for the global demand, that requires sustainable practices, especially when the crops are to become fuel integrants, such as soy biodiesel blends.

Environmentalist however are less worried about the developed countries planting soybeans for biodiesel than they are undeveloped countries like Brazil, where unfortunately, the majority of the farming community never gets past the fourth grade.

The current threat posed by transgenic soybean production in Brazil is a perfect example of what environmentalist fear.

In the worst case scenario for example, people would over-cut and abuse such vast regions of millions of year old rainforest space just to produce soybeans, that the disaster would effect the whole world through irreparable global warming.

Some theorists however have conjectured that for higher sustainability in agriculture, architectures vast experience in verticalization would be a great benefit to crop production.

Anybody that grows tomatoes, knows how valuable a good verticalized structure can be when you have limited space in the back yard and are looking for healthier fruits, but what about soybeans?

Could 50 story cylinder towers of circular planters provide a suitable and sustainable bedding for the long term harvesting of soybeans? Or would the shadow cast ruin the developing potential of land, around the cylinder?

Those just might be the kinds of sci-fi questions agricultures might need to make when confronting the sustained demand for 200 million gallons of biodiesel that will raise the price of soybeans by 17 cents per bushel very soon.

For instance, at those estimates, 200 acres of soybeans at current prices would provide an additional US $1,530 to the current established price table, while 4,000 would provide an additional US $30,600.

Excellent incentives for finding more crop space for certain. And the demand will have a tendency to only increase, as distributors and gas stations hop on the soy biodiesel bandwagon that has already taken hold of Iowa.

In more than 45 different counties in Iowa alone, anyone looking for a soy biodiesel gas station will find one. In the continental US there is not a single state that doesnt have at least one single dealer that offers biodiesel.

The Midwest currently has hold of this trend in the US, but the trend is growing and for good reason.

Soy biodiesel has exceptional lubricity with only 2% additive it increases lubricity by 66%.

By using soy biodiesel, all fuel-injected diesel engines reduce friction enormously extending equipment lifespan tremendously.

The biodiesel derived from 100% virgin soybean oil in the 2% blend meets ASTM standards and has been tested by Standyne Automotive Corp. proving 100% safe for the engine and beneficial.

Forty million on-road tests have shown that by using the no more than a 2% blend of soy biodiesel to current petrol-diesel products on the market, all U.S. on-road diesel engines would be sustained by only 500 million bushels of soybeans, almost all of Iowas current annual crop.

Aside from developing a secondary income for participating farmers cow power will help reduce the effect of raw manure run off into local water systems. This will also help to reduce odors and provide a source of bedding for farmers. They will be able to use the dry by products in place of sawdust or other bedding. This provides electricity to the public, protects water systems and helps farmers to reduce and offset some of their over head costs.

This service has been offered to Vermont citizens since September 1, 2004. Customers have a choice of how much of their electricity could come from using Cow Power. Their choices are 25 percent, 50 percent or 100 percent. Their bills would be a little higher than normal. This increase of four cents per kilowatt hour goes directly to the farmer.

If there is a shortage of kilowatt hours from participating farms, Central Vermont Public Service will try to gain Renewable Energy Certificates from other regional renewable generation. If there are not available in the regional market the company will deposit the payments in to the CVPS Renewable Development Fund. Thisfund is run by an independent board. These monies will be used for development and start up costs, to help farmers overcome market barriers, and generally support farms as they enter the renewable energy market.

The Central Vermont Public Service Cow power program is a model for other states and public service boards to offer renewable energy source for the consumer and to help increase to farmers to stay in agriculture.

President of Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc., Dean Oestreich (subsidiary of DuPont) stated that they will be playing an important role in this venture. Biofuels emit far fewer quantities of greenhouse gases. It is cost effective to produce. Biofuels are a viable alternative to traditional petroleum based fuels. The biofuels will create a new market for those working in agriculture because crops such as corn grain, wheat, sorghum and sugar beets will become high in demand. In the near future Pioneer plans to be able to use cellulose based products suchas corn stalks and switch grass to produce butanol.

The process of creating biobutanol is a fermentation process similar to that of ethanol. The idea is to provide another alternative fuel not to compete with the use of ethanol. The venture actually began in 2003, with the hopes to that the properties of this new fuel will overcome the limitations of traditional biofuels. BP and DuPont are working with British Sugar to change the countrys first ethanol fermentation plant to a butanol fermentation plant and to begin full production, marketing and sales of biobutanol by 2007.

Related:
BP Dupont Press Release

Vehicles in Japan account for 20% of energy consumption in Japan. Most of this demand is currently met by Middle Eastern Oil. The Environment Ministry is looking to launch ethanol production on the island of Miyako in the Okinawa island chain. This where the majority of the countrys sugar cane is produced.

Wisconsin Farm Technology Days

It will cost $30,000 to rent the generators and purchase the fuel for them, about half the cost if the show tapped into power from a utility, Ballweg said. – Sheboygan Press

It is great seeing the promotion of biodiesel generators at this farm technology day event, makes good promotion of smart biodiesel usage.

The exposition will be held at Hesselink’s Quonset Farms near Oostburg on July 11-13, 2006

Related:
Wisconsin Farm Technology Day Website
Press Release for Farm Technology Days

Generator Rentals:
Kohler Rental Power
7767 Old Telegraph Rd
Severn, MD 21144
(410) 969-9100

In Troy New York Governor Pataki and the family owned company John Ray and Sons pumped their first gallon of biodiesel fuel.

Ray has been a proponent of alternative energy so the biodiesel fuel pump station was a natural fit.

Currently Ray & Sons has a 2000 Biodiesel gallon capacity.

Based on the proposed tax incentives and that there is some political clout behind it we might actually see biodiesel take a foothold in upstate NY.

Ray & Sons is a pioneer in biodiesel fuel pump stations. With the addition of an investment into a larger storage tank by Sprague Energy in Albany this could be the tipping point for Biodiesel in NY.

Willie Nelson Biodiesel AKA BioWillie offers a biodiesel B20 blend in Dallas, Texas. Nelson and Peter Bell from a biodiesel supplier named Distribution Drive formed Willie Nelson Biodiesel with three other partners in December 2004.

BioWillie’s Mercedes 320 CDI ( for personal use in Hawaii ) and his 6 tour buses use biodiesel when they can get it. Carl’s Corner, a truck stop in Texas was the first to offer the Biowillie B20 blend.

The response from my trucker customers so far has been phenomenal, said Carl Cornelius, co-owner Carls Corner.

Distribution Drive, a wholly owned subsidiary of Earth Biofuels Inc, Jackson MS, has opened a new biodiesel blending facility at the Motiva Enterprises terminal in Dallas TX and offers biodiesel to customers in the Forth Worth area. Distribution Drive even supplies the US Military with B100, cool!

Willie is new to biodiesel, was not even aware of its benefits 2 years ago, but his fame has launched him into position and given him a new name, “BioWillie”.

Freeman said – “I live in a small town,” and “I’m a supporter of small town USA, that’s primarily what we are.”
Plant manager Jimmy Stephens said: “I think it’s very big, we’ve only scratched the surface here,” and “I think there’s going to be a mini spring-up now and we’ve been asked to build more.”

Google Finance: Earth Biofuels, Inc. (formerly Meadows Springs, Inc.) is in the production, marketing, and distribution of alternative fuels, with an emphasis on biodiesel fuel. The Company sells 100% biodiesel (B-100) to fuel wholesalers who blend it with petroleum diesel and fuel sales, and food and beverage sales at the Company’s service station in Byram, Mississippi. It was engaged in the business of its Website, www.findcontractoronline.com, to provide construction contractors with referrals of leads of home construction and home improvement projects.

An Ohio school is switching to biodiesel to fuel it’s buses. Superintendent Lawrence Miller said that biodiesel will cost the district 25 cents more per gallon but he also mentioned that the state will up their reimbursement rate by 10 percent so in about a year the district will end up saving money.

“We’re taking it one step at a time, said Miller. If it works to the advantage of our school system, and to our buses and our children, then we’ll continue to use it”.

Biodiesel is a cleaner alternative to regular diesel.

Indiana will soon have the world’s largest biodiesel processing plant. Governor Mitch Daniels announced that Louis Dreyfus Industries, LCC will build a combined facility to process soybeans and produce biodiesel.

The project is going to have two phases:

1. Build a 50 million bushel per year soybean processing plant.
2. Build a biodiesel production facility.

This is great news for Indiana, alternative fuel production can stimulate economic recovery. Here is the governor’s press release.

Biodiesel is often blended with petroleum diesel to produce a fuel that is compatible with diesel engines. Biodiesel blends reduce harmful emissions. Biodiesel blends will become more common as drivers are made aware of the many benefits.

The 3 common blends are:

• B2 – 2% biodiesel and 98% diesel
• B5 – 5% biodiesel and 95% diesel
• B20 – 20% biodiesel and 80% diesel

Learn more about blends from the Clean City fact sheet.

Rudolf Diesel is the father of diesel engines. Rudolf Diesel was born on the 18th of March 1858 in the Victorian city of Paris, France. His death on the 29th night of September in 1913 on the English Channel, was perhaps an example of industrial or political espionage of the time, but the events leading up to his untimely death are mysterious. From the time he was born to the moment of death, the world Rudolf Diesel knew and lived in was in constant political, social and economical turmoil. Perhaps through his scientific, theoretical and economical philosophies, the world would have been different and history as we know it could have told a less bloody tale. But the fact remains, that if we choose to learn from his ideas, we can still make the world a better place for the here, now and future generations to come.

Immigrants from the city of Augsburg, Bavaria, the Diesel family settled in the city of Paris early in the birth of the Victorian Gothic period. Early in 1858 the man who would bring clarity of thought to the world of energy was born. The world was evolving and industry was just beginning to show the power of mass production. Kings and dynasties still believed in the growing power of warfare, and no matter how hard the creative Bavarian elite may have tried, they could not inhibit the historical Franco-German war of 1870. The Diesel family found themselves deported to London. As Rudolf Diesel’s father was of Augsburg, he had him sent there to study.

Rudolf Diesel studied engineering from the first days of technical high school and in 1880 he received a job working for Carl von Linde in Paris. His personal fascination with the theoretical efficiency of the Carnot Cycle led to the eventual development of the internal combustion engine, in 1890 (before which he was experimenting with an expansion engine using ammonia). By 1892 his paper on the “Theory and Construction of a Rational Heat Motor” had the support of German industrialists, two of which (Maschinenfabrik Augsburg and Krupp) offered resources to produce a series of his machines.

By 1897 Rudolf Diesel had a working 25 horsepower, four-stroke, single vertical cylinder compression engine. Later in 1900 at the World Fair, the fame of his practical and even more efficient design by this time began to make a fortune. So influential was the Diesel engine, that nations and industrial tycoons began to imagine once again the wealth of conquest through war. Perhaps, by 1913, there were no longer any Kings with power enough to act on war, but those men of wealthy, royal and privileged background were now beginning to wage a war among themselves, a war for space on an evil market based on consumption.

By 1913 the economical situation had peaked so high, that the new kings were now wealthy owners of industries the world over. Rudolf Diesel knew this so very well, yet perhaps due to innocence, or faith he believed that the proper way to fuel his engine was through an energy that could sustain agriculture as well as industry, but price and war spoke louder and on the cold night of the 29th of September in 1913, his body accidentally fell over the side of the ship. Some say that it was suicide, others claim he was killed by German oil tycoons or perhaps politicians had him killed not to sell the Rudolf Diesel engine design to the English.

Biodiesel is the transesterification of vegetable oils into combustible diesel fuel. Rudolf Diesel the inventor of the diesel engine was not the inventor of biodiesel, however, his popularity and achievements merited the name. Biodiesel was most probably discovered in 1853 by two chemists making soap (E. Duffy and J. Patrick). But the uses of transesterification did not become apparent until much later in the late 1980′s early 1990′s. In February of 1892, Diesel applied for a patent on his engine. A year later, a decent design was already being produced. In 1897 at the Exibition Fair in Paris, Rudolf Diesel showed the world his invention, and became famous. The diesel engine can be run on biofuel as it is run today on fossil fuel.

Biodiesel is different from petrodiesel basically in that rather than being processed from fossils, biodiesels are processed from vegetables such as soy, corn, peanuts, apple seeds, deep fry oil from fast food restaurants… etc. Anything that is a fatty acid can be used as the basis for esterification. What destroyed the biodiesel industry was viscosity. The thinner the diesel, the faster it moves, and that, plus price (believe it or not), is what made petrodiesel win the economical and political situations during the depression. Renewable vs. limited resources… So obvious to us now days, especially after suffering from petrol dependency, but the industry for renewable fell out long ago. Rudolf Diesel himself is noted as having said in 1911 “The diesel engine can be fed with vegetable oils and would help considerably in the development of agriculture of the countries which use it.” Then in 1912 “the use of vegetable oils for engine fuels may seem insignificant today. But such oils may become in course of time as important as petroleum and the coal tar products of the present time.”

What wondrous and inspiring words, yet forgotten and set aside by the empty culture of a civilization bent on filling their souls with image and consumption. Biodiesel is far more energy efficient than petrodiesel, especially when tracking the ecological footprints. Petrodiesel leaves a mark that takes time and effort to wipe clean. Epistemologists and political scientists agree that if civilization continues to depend on a resource that cannot be replenished, then that resource will one day be the cause of serious changes in the quality of life. Speculation aside, biodiesel is an alternative that if invested in, can make the “unavoidable change” subtle and almost unnoticed. Biodiesel is a solution. At the moment, considered “alternative”, most people associate biodiesel with renegade hippies lost in a “green” world. Biodiesel is definately dominated by a more humanistic culture, and as political tendencies go, has even been speculated as being “hunted” by those interested in securing wealth.

The strange disappearance of Rudolf Diesel on the English Channel, while on a business trip seems almost coincidental to the rise to power of black oil barons. Without Rudolf Diesel there to defend biodiesel and agriculture, it seems as though they just took over. Political situations modified, making it harder and harder to see a biodiesel market survive. Petroldiesel was cheaper back then (a foreign concept to us now) and supplies were far more abundant. But whatever the facts that led up to what appears to be a conspiracy for black oil barons, we do find ourselves in the here and now. What we need to do now is change the future. Speculation and philosophy around the horror of our industrial revolution is useless unless it in some way feeds and propels our future in a progressive way. Biodiesel is the future. Biodiesel is the future because it will stimulate our agriculture providing jobs out in the countryside (perhaps minimizing the migration to our metropolises) and thereby offering a better quality of life, not only socio-economically, but also environmentally and culturally. With government incentive, biodiesel could potentially offer a solution to the increasing challenges of super population in third word metropolises such as Sao Paulo and Mexico City.

If biodiesel becomes a tendency in the near future, not to replace petroldiesel, but to at the very least offer an economical alternative, with governmental incentive packages, agriculture would become a much more wealthy area, population distribution would spread more evenly, city centers would become far more enjoyable and relaxing than today and crime would diminish. Biodiesel is more than merely an alternative source of renewable energy for cars and trucks, biodiesel offers a future with more scientific development in areas that work with our planet rather than against her, biodiesel offers a calmer, less stressful and far more secure future based on a nations self-sustainability that invests in a far more humane, yet still very profitable resource. Rudolf Diesel knew this about biodiesel, our political scientists and epistemologists know this about biodiesel, yet we the consumers are told differently at the gas station.

Biodiesel is on the cutting edge of breaking a scientific paradigm, and with that comes questioning. We should question the nature of our society, we should question the nature of our resources and how we use them. We should question the nature of how are ways will effect us in the future, or effect our children. Questioning biodiesel is just as important as questioning petrodiesel. Biodiesel will prove to be a more sustainable reality for our next generations. Biodiesel, if well questioned by all, will be the future.