Factor E Farm Blog

Today I had an interesting conversation with Fabio Barone, a Master’s of Science student in Holistic Science at Schumacher College. We discussed bioproducts – biofuels, bioplastics, and others – which are one of the keys to localization and the Global Village Construction Set. He is writing his thesis on bioproducts – within the context of sustainable communities and open source development – which is much needed discussion. I look forward to seeing his conclusions.

I suggested to Fabio that perhaps evaluating the real story behind biofuels could be an interesting exploration in his thesis. By biofuels, I mean root crops or fruit – and in particular, Jerusalem artichokes – which are my favorite because they are self-seeding. When you harvest the crop, a full crop always comes up the year after from little pieces of root left behind. You can harvest with a potato harvester. This is as easy and ecological as it gets, it seems.

Point is, the calculation remains – and you should go through the math yourself – the area similar to the area of any city is required to grow all the fuel for the city’s cars. That means land requirements are not high (unlike corn alcohol). Jerusalem artichoke tuber yields are typically 15 tons per acre! This is similar to other root crops – but I know of no other suitable perennials.
Thus, why hasn’t such a means of production proliferated all over the world? Or, even more simply, why have I not heard of at least one person harvesting such Jerusalem artichoke alcohol biofuel successfully on a small scale? This is one of those questions that are pressing for me – and this should be a disturbing question for anyone interested in localization. We are going to find out in the next 2 or so years for ourselves. Any comments from anyone in the know on the topic?
I understand that the sugar in Jerusalem artichokes is not readily accessible, but that is not difficult to overcome – such as by preheating the fermentation mix with solar energy.

Today I had an interesting conversation with Fabio Barone, a Master's of Science student in Holistic Science at Schumacher College. We discussed bioproducts - biofuels, bioplastics, and others - which are one of the keys to localization and the Global Village Construction Set. He is writing his thesis on bioproducts - within the context ...

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The cold weather blew in to join us at the harvest Thanksgiving dinner. We had our first snow of the season and our first bio-butter: biodiesel which solidified due to the cold. No, we did not spread it on the dinner rolls. And fortunately, we did not put it in the car. A day before it was a reddish liquid. A night of cold temperatures brought our biodiesel to its knees. There are techniques out there (I need to do my research) to keep it liquid during cold temperatures but at least it doesn’t gum up injectors (like pure veggie oil) in such frigid circumstances.

The cold weather blew in to join us at the harvest Thanksgiving dinner. We had our first snow of the season and our first bio-butter: biodiesel which solidified due to the cold. No, we did not spread it on the dinner rolls. And fortunately, we did not put it in the ...

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Biodiesel has returned to the back burner at Factor E Farm. The potential collaborator has not yet responded. Apparently, he does not understand that biodiesel is one of numerous pursuits and without a little lubercation (ie. cash), we cannot simply drop everything for biodiesel.

But for a few days, we did fan the flame on biodiesel research and found the following: biodieselsecret.com

Its very appealing: 46 cents and 5 minutes to make a fuel for diesel engines out of vegetable oil.

The popular, well-documented and researched options are
1. Straight (or Waste) Vegetable oil, which requires modification of the vehicle (a second tank, a second filter, and heated lines) and may “gum” up vital parts of the vehicle (injector pump and fuel lines).
2. BioDiesel, which requires slight if any modification of the vehicle (fuel lines and gaskets may need to be replaced), but one must make the fuel (mixing hazardous chemicals, such as lye and methanol) with a somewhat expensive machine (or make your own) for an investment of your time.

So, the mix and go system proposed by Diesel Secret Energy is quite appealing. But does it work? Although they do offer “testimonials” on their website, they do not send out references. Hmmmm. I was going to ask if anyone knew anything about them, but instead, I did my own research and that conversation has already taken place. Many times. Here’s some of what I found.

*This discussion thread explains it best: http://biodiesel.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/419605551/m/9741005301
*For more a list of discussion links: http://biodiesel.infopop.cc/groupee/forums/a/tpc/f/419605551/m/1311010701

The key pieces:
*This is not proven technology. Data is not available for its effectiveness as a fuel, safety handling, or environmental effects. People have posted about injection pump failures, which they attribute to Diesel Secret.
*The “secret” ingredient is dimethylbenzene (xylol).
*The secret ingredient costs 13 dollars plus 10 dollars shipping for a 12 oz bottle. Although I did not research other sources of xyolol,my guess is that $23 is a rip-off.
*The secret ingredient is mixed with Waste Vegetable Oil, Gasoline, Kerosene and Cetane Boost additive.
*There are no easy answers

Biodiesel has returned to the back burner at Factor E Farm. The potential collaborator has not yet responded. Apparently, he does not understand that biodiesel is one of numerous pursuits and without a little lubercation (ie. cash), we cannot simply drop everything for biodiesel. But for a few days, we did ...

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Yesterday I talked to Dan Granett of Granett Engineering. He made a boundary layer turbine successfully, and has performance data (please let me know if you know others). This turbine is an external combustion engine, and is a cheaper, simpler, and more efficient alternative to mainsream internal combusion engines. It consists of smooth, rotating disks:

It constitutes a multitrillion dollar potential market, and therefore merits attention. It may be powered by solar concentrator heat – or any other fuel.

I asked Dan to provide a quote, if we contracted him to build another, more robust version. I asked for a working turbine, about 5 kW scale – including a Babington burner flash steam generator running on waste vegetable oil. This means that it’s a self-contained package – fed by waste oil – ready to be coupled to a generator for power production. If you are a critic of vegetable oil fuel becuase of its clogging problems, note that the Babington is clog-free by design.

If you don’t understand the significance of this product – we are talking of a fab-at-home-level technological device, fed by any fuel, for addressing electricity production. Couple this to solar concentrators as the heat source, and you are using an elecricity provider who sends you no bills. This is like photovoltaic cells – except at a fraction of the cost.

Stay tuned for the quote. We’ll be asking you to help fund this open source project.

Other applications include hybrid cars and hybrid electric tractors, and anything that requires a power unit. Sound interesting?

Now allow me to peak your oil interest. Algae are a new and promising fuel crop because of high oil content. One can grow at least a factor 10 more algal biomass per area than any other terrestrial plant. This particular algal growth technology appears to be the state of the art, in terms of cost of production. We are talking about absolutely decentralized energy production possibilities. Humans may evolve beyond oil wars and resource scarcity scares with all these above notions.

Yesterday I talked to Dan Granett of Granett Engineering. He made a boundary layer turbine successfully, and has performance data (please let me know if you know others). This turbine is an external combustion engine, and is a cheaper, simpler, and more efficient alternative to mainsream internal combusion engines. It consists of smooth, rotating ...

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Quick update. On CEB, I am hoping to spit out the first brick by this week.

The flexible fabrication front is hot. Deep in the fiery Iceland underground, Smari and his Fab Lab team are working on an open source, computer controlled XYZ table for acetylene torch cutting and routing:

This means that you draw a design on your computer screen, and the XYZ table spits out cutouts of 2 inch steel, wood, or other materials, according to your desgin.

Imagine the CEB press, XYZ table for flexible fabrication, and other hard core equipment – being synthesized one by one by a global team of doers interested in a free and prosperous society. Here comes the Global Village Construction Set. Pure passion.

This blog works. Today I got a comment on my State of Survival post, with a great theory book, hot off the press, on peer-to-peer physical production. This is what our team (and Frithjof Bergmann) calls open source flexible and digital fabrication. Download the open book at http://www.peerconomy.org/ .

Today I got into some communication on hydroponic lettuce, based on past postings or report on the subject. It was an interesting spurt, but the company in question is not organic – though pest management is apparently orgnanic – and highly proprietary – up to the computer code that automates a turnkey production facility. We still plan on returning to hydroponic lettuce, with the intent to develop a working, open source business plan viable in medium scale production, say 50,000 heads per year and multiples thereof. Our links to computer control can yield fully automated operations, which may be relevant to us in the future. Here we still call out for any help from practitioners of organic greenhouse crop production – those who have mastered pest issues. Materials and process controls are tractable, but so far we have not mastered pest issues. We can essentially start up, but we have not the experience to keep a system from being wiped out by biological competitors of all sorts.

There are also interesting developments in biodiesel. We ran a successful test batch some time ago, and a local guy wants us to build a 250 gallon system. We are currently negotiating details. If all goes well, we will have the first open source, production-scale facility that I know of. There are 25 gallon versions that are already open source and relatively self-replicable. This is an exciting, though limited, possibility – and we welcome suggestions from those who have built systems that are 100 gallons or greater in size.

Last item is solar panels. We need 1-2kW of solar power to complete our off-grid system. We found that many solar traffic arrow signs get hit every year, and those have free, salvageable panels on them. I started inquiring about in-kind donations, since we are in a position to accept tax-deductible contributions. If you have any sources or suggestions, please let us know.

Quick update. On CEB, I am hoping to spit out the first brick by this week. The flexible fabrication front is hot. Deep in the fiery Iceland underground, Smari and his Fab Lab team are working on an open source, computer controlled XYZ table for acetylene torch cutting and routing: This means that you draw a ...

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