BrevardBioDiesel Blog

Here are two shots of the Brevard BioDiesel presentation table at the first annual Solar Music Fair held on the Florida Institute of Technology on Earth Day.

Resodyn Corp has parterned to make BIOSOURCE Fuels LLC and use some form of proprietary acoustic separation in their continuous biodiesel production process. Called an "Acoustic Grease Conversion Reactor, the process has been awarded a $70,000 EPA award this year.

What seems the most interesting:

• Insensitive to the free fatty acid content of feedstocks
• No wash step required
• Recovered glycerine 97% pure!

A little confusing - one of their articles says this process removes the need for catalysts and solvents, but another diagram on their site has the conventional Feedstock + Catalyst + Methanol diagram.

In this story an interesting vehicle is described:

- $20,000 to manufacture
- 3 cylinder diesel + 2 hybrid motors
- 50 mpg
- made from off-the-shelf components
- potentially easy to repair
- diesel engine removable to act as 5KW generator

That generator angle sounds great for hurricane survivors here in Florida!

Other diesel/hybrid news:
NYC going diesel/hybrid on city buses

FedEx getting 75 diesel/hybrids.

NASA won a Closing the Circle enviromental award this month. Go NASA and Brevard County!

From the press release:

"The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) exceeded the 75 percent alternative fuel vehicle acquisition requirement for 125 vehicles by acquiring 330 total credits in FY 2004.
NASA acquired 308 light-duty vehicles in 2004, 167 of which were EPAct-covered, and gained 61 credits for using biodiesel. The agency also used alternative fuels for 27 percent of its operation of AFVs, an increase of 18 percent over FY 2003."

A biochemist has come up with a new method to extract soybean oil from soy flakes that is estimated to cost 1/3 the convential price. Plus it uses no Hexane (a regulated air pollutant). The new method uses dry soy flakes, methanol and sodium hydroxide - the latter two components the
same as those commonly used in the transesterification step of converting oil to biodiesel.

Some of the results from our ongoing local survey:

• 2/3 of respondents have a diesel vehicle
• these same 2/3 are ready to try biodiesel now
• 75% willing to pay more for biodiesel than petrodiesel
• Cocoa is the most requested fueling station location
• 90%+ willing to purchase biodiesel from unattended co-op
• 60%+ interested in making their own biodiesel

Caught a bit of the Alternative Fueld Vehicle (AFV) Odyssey Day program held at Florida Solar Energy Center in Cocoa, FL this morning. Noticed HUGR Systems from Apopka, Biodiesel Research (also from Apopka) were there. Many fleet people from along the Florida coast. Also many other individuals and all seemed to be interested in biodiesel.
David Dunagan of the US DOE had lots of good information including:

• Grants.gov website for searching on grants available for biofuels. Search there on something like "biomass" and you get 17 hits.
• Research into castor beans as an oil feedstock, at Mississippi State University, show promise. 3 times the oil as peanuts. Natural pesticide properties of plant help during crop rotation.
• CSX railway locomotives use 450 million gallons of diesel/year. 40% of that is used while the locomotives are idling.

We'll be present at:

First Annual Solar Music Fair
Earth Day, Friday, April 22, 2005
Noon until 4 p.m.
Florida Institute of Technology
150 West University Blvd.
at/near the Panther Plaza

Read more!

Brevard BioDiesel was pleased to be ask to present information about biodiesel at the Florida Institute of Technology on 7 April 2005. We gave a 45 minute presentation to Frank Leslie's Renewable Energy Course. This presentation closely followed the powerpoint information available in our Education section on this site. Speaking of the education section, there is a new writeup there titled "Global Warming or Climate Chaos" - check it out.