biodiesel dialogue

ybiofuels (ybiofuels) wrote,@ 2004-04-21 13:32:00 Myth Debunking 101 Among the small group of people who read this blog are some extremely supportive people, without whom this company would have difficulty existing. I certainly appreciate the feedback I receive. I get a lot of emails each week, many of which are prospective new customers, many of whom have a lot of good questions. This morning, however, I received an email with the subject header "FUEL" from a person I don't know, and here was the text, all in caps: CONSIDERING BIO-DIESEL CAN BE MADE FOR ABOUT. 54$ WITH WASTE VEGGIE OIL, HOW CAN YOU JUSTIFY THE PRICE AT THE FUELING STATION. TO REALLY GET PEOPLE INTO THE ECO SCENE THE COSTS MUST COME DOWN. THEY CAN IF EVERYONE IS NOT LOOKING TO MAKE AN EXCESS BUCK. I QUIT "HOMEPOWER" WHEN THEY WENT SLICK. WHAT COLOR IS YOUR VOLVO? D. Sunny and my dad both suggested I don't waste any time on it, but it's now a low-key afternoon (following a busy morning), and I can't stop thinking about it. Time to debunk some myths. First, biodiesel can not be made for .54 (or less, as is often reported) with waste veggie oil. I am sick of this myth. It has been spread in magazines, websites, newspapers, etc. for years and it is a distortion of the truth in a way that is extremely unfair to companies like our own. Currently we are preparing a commercial fuel production facility. Among costs that we include that are not included in that figure are: rent, labor, disposal of waste, energy, equipment, grease collection infrastructure, to name a few. Now, if you're talking about ASTM spec biodiesel, then you have to add other costs as well. All of these costs exist for the homebrewer (with the possible exception of waste disposal, which is all-too-often simply "down the drain") but are never included in that figure. Labor alone would add a dollar or more per gallon for many homebrewers. Unfortunately, the sensational figures that get printed in big letters are simply the cost of the methanol and lye. That's it. Talk about not telling the whole story! Second, I agree, the costs must come down, but the myth here is that there is some sort of conspiracy to keep them high that people like me participate in. Our margin is practically non-existent. Our distributors have it even worse, and I long deeply for the day when we give them a respectable margin. We are operating at a loss, with a plan to change that as quickly as possible. My wife and I make less than grocery store clerks. Everything is an investment in the future. But maybe I was too quick to speak in the first line of this paragraph - fuel should not be cheap. Period. We don't want people taking fuel for granted. Period. Even biodiesel taxes the planet - remember that. Third, I've rarely met a member of the renewable energy industry who was motivated by anything other than ideals. Unfortunately, there will always be petroleum companies and other large corporations that exploit what they see as a hot item, but what the rest of us see as the key to humanity's survival. The only way to beat companies like that is to ignore them, not buy from them, and support companies like Yokayo Biofuels, Biofuel Oasis, The Biofuel Station, etc. We are small companies built on ideals, trying to provide you with what you want. I emailed the person the link to this response, and it is my hope that I can change their mind. I put it here because I think this needs to be talked about a little. Thanks for reading. (Post a new comment) Wood, Eggs, Biofuels, Garlic (Anonymous) 2004-04-21 19:35 (link) Right on, Kumar. I heat my house with wood. It's free. I can easily cut enough hardwood from my woodlot every year to heat this place. Takes about four face cords. The heat is free as long as I don't count what it takes to chainsaw it, skid it up to the house with the tractor, cut it into rounds, split it into burnable sized pieces, and stack it in the shed. By the way, I have to have two sheds to accomplish this: one for seasoned, one for wet. Once I have filled a shed, and dried it for a year, all I have to do is clean my chimney and burn away. Free fuel. Fantastic. It keeps my family warm. During the burning season I only have to fetch about a wheelbarrow load per day. It only takes 10 minutes per load. Double that if you count the time it takes to empty the ashes into the compost. My guess is that to heat with "free" firewood in North Carolina is about ten times as expensive as using electric. And the same is true when I raise chickens for eggs. And the same is true when I make my own fuel. I haven't done a cost analysis of the garlic which I grew last winter. It appears we will be harvesting a huge crop, and will have enough braids to last a year. I should get the calculator out. I wonder if I add up the costs of the raised bed, amended soil, deer fence, cultivation, planting, harvesting and braiding time I will end up cheaper than A+P. Gosh, I sure hope so. Otherwise I suppose there is no point in growing my own vegetables...Lyle (Reply to this) FUEL (Anonymous) 2004-04-21 19:37 (link) EDUCATE YES, CHANGE PROBABLY NOT. IS THERE A SITE THAT DOES THE NUMBERS? MORE THAN WILLING TO LEARN THE FACTS. I DON'T REMEMBER THE MAG, BUT IF THEY ARE SPREADING MISINFORMATION IT NEEDS TO BE CORRECTED. HAVING BEEN AN EMPLOYER FOR 35 YEARS I CAN'T IMAGINE LABOR ALONE ADDING $1.00 GAL, GRANTED I 'M NOT FAMILIAR WITH THE WHOLE PROCESS BUT IT'S BULK REFINING. EXPLAIN IT TO ME AND I'LL GLADLY SPREAD THE WORD. I, PERSONALLY LOOK FORWARD TO USING BIO IN THE FUTURE. D. (Reply to this) (Thread) Re: FUEL ybiofuels 2004-04-22 08:24 (link) Thank you- I was hoping you'd respond! Unfortunately, I don't know of a site that does the numbers, and to be fair, they probably are slightly different for everyone. I don't fully blame the publications for the misinformation, as I appreciate the enthusiasm and what I see as an earnest effort to get information out. They (the publications) don't know who to regard as experts, and so sometimes, they are simply talking to the wrong folks. My labor figure was in regards to homebrewing, which is usually what the low cost (i.e. the .54 figure you cited) refers to. A typical homebrewer will spend several hours making each batch of fuel, when you include grease collection, oil preparation, the biodiesel reaction, washing, filtering, etc. A typical batch might be 15 gallons. If that takes 3 hours of total work, then we're talking $30 if one values their work at $10/hr. - you can see how that alone is $2/gal. Making bigger batches doesn't necessarily take that much more labor, so that's one way to save money, but I'll be honest, I've checked out virtually every known method, taken a 3-day class on commercial production in Iowa, built processors, and have been designing our own commercial facility for the better part of a year, and here's what I've found: The absolute best, most efficient technology out there, which is really really expensive, can make biodiesel on a commercial level for as low as .70/gal ONLY IF the glycerin byproduct is being sold for $4/gal and all the grease feedstock is collected in-house. Additionally, it has to be producing at least 60,000 gal/mo to achieve this low cost per gallon. Everything else I've seen is a much higher cost. The fuel we buy right now and resell is, for the record, quite a bit over $2/gallon out of our pocket. That shouldn't be the case, but until we control our supply by producing, it's a supplier's market, and the demand is going up, so the price is too. We actually have been a leader in keeping prices low, but it's taken its toll at times. Thanks again for the discussion. (Reply to this) (Parent) mr1spike 2004-04-22 09:40 (link) your Volvo... have you been holding out on us Kumar? (Reply to this) (Thread) No Volvo here. ybiofuels 2004-04-22 09:58 (link) I took that as a harsh joke. Actually, I've never cared for Volvos. Only in recent years have I come to appreciate foreign cars, actually. Sunny and I love the eco-utilitarianism of our VW station wagon. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread) Re: No Volvo here. mr1spike 2004-04-22 10:03 (link) yeah, I figured you didn't! I saw it as a real cheap shot... Hope my twisted sense of humor didn't offend you! (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread) Re: No Volvo here. ybiofuels 2004-04-22 10:52 (link) No offense, of course. (Reply to this) (Parent) This is great! (Anonymous) 2004-04-23 18:19 (link) Kumar, Mr. Spike, D. The cost of my biodiesel is as follows:$.52 per gallon for the methanol. The lye is free the grease is free, I have processed with wood, which is free. I use rain water to wash the fuel. The soap water I use in conjunction with lye to clean engines. Pumps are 12 volt. A hundred gallon per day through put costs $20 for the electric if I don't use wood to heat. I figure I'm worth $15 per hour if I am not staring at the clouds while draining finished product into the flower bed. So, as it stands right now I can make fuel for $1.35 per gallon. A 32 cent savings on fuel oil and a 50 cent per gallon savings on road fuel. I don't pay road tax like you (Kumar) would have to. Here that would be $.15 per gallon added. What haven't I talked about: Tipping fee for oil. The guy I compete with for the oil charges $70 per 55 gallon drum of grease hauled. I charge nothing, but ask that it be filtered and dewatered first. Virgin oil? Never bought any. Would have to eventually though because there isn't enough used oil around here to make large quantities of fuel. Lye? I have nearly a ton stored behind my garage. Its a $1.00 per pound from Wasau Chemical. What about glycerin? I use mine to make hand soap. Guess what every one gets in their stocking for Christmas? How about the cost of a good old Department of natural Resources environmental quality inspection? "Well Mr. DualFuel, I see you have a puddle of some type of oil in your backyard. We will just have to drill a test well and check the water table. Hmmmmmmm" So the whole point here is that a home brewer can make cheaper fuel than can be purchased. BUT, the homebrewer is the only one that can do that. Guys like Kumar have a lot more overhead and there is no way around it with the present system. The glossy magazines sort of skip a lot of important facts about any alternative energy source. If you want to know what works then watch me for a while. I simply cannot afford to run a deficit. I have no ideals but I am concerned with using everything possible to its fullest extant. "Waste not want not." One thing I have thought about for some time is why are businesses punished for making money while regular Joes are rewarded for non-productivity? Can't figure it out. Its seems like Ayn Rand was right. Looters. DF (Reply to this) (Thread) Re: This is great! ybiofuels 2004-04-24 10:59 (link) Excellent additions, DF! (Reply to this) (Parent) Just to clarify something. (Anonymous) 2004-04-26 17:13 (link) I agree whole heartedly with Lyle's comment about wood. Wood I make with my crawler on my own land with my own saw is NOT free. It is real expensive. Just having the pins pushed on a set of tracks would probably cost $5000. You could buy a lot of store bought furnace fuel for the $15000 that the crawler costs (used). What I meant by "free wood" is literal. One hundred yards from my house is a cabinet shop that has a three story pile of butts. The man says, "please haul it off." So does the fire marshal. So its pretty rare that I cut any of my own trees. I usually take the dump truck to the bush where the skidders pile for the slasher and load those huge piles of waste butts. When lazy, I mount my old garden tractor and pull a trailer to the cabinet shop and load a pile from there. So the point is, I use the same principle as the waste vegetable oil collecting, namely using society's dregs to power my trip. Now, Kumar might do the same deal if he finds a sustainable source of waste heat. I am pretty sure that California would pay him to pyrolize tires and use the heat to make fuel. The trick with Lyle's wood gathering is to get paid at both ends. Like using all the wood gathering equipment to cut someone's tree in the city, then selling the wood. Done that, $500 to drop the tree and $300 for the wood, another $25 to dump the chips on someone's landscape arrangement. Anyhow, it bugged me to think that Kumar can't find practical minded alternative fuel people. I think its important that people know that I do this because its the only fuel I can afford. This means I don't have any time for ideals. It does work and the big payoff is that I don't waste resources so I end up being eco-friendly. So keep trying, thats whats the most expensive part of the whole deal, finding a suitable system that works for the individual. Rarely is this solution found in MEN or some similar magazine. Later. DualFuel (Reply to this) (Thread) Re: Free as in free beer (Anonymous) 2004-07-23 01:19 (link) Ok, maybe I'm a total cheapskate, or just a nut. I've told the local builders and tree removers that they can dump their trees in my yard for free. This save them having to haul them over to the other side of town and pay a fee to the dump. Right now I have about six piles of logs in my yard (probably each about 2 cords), so in the evening when it gets cool I go out with my bow saw ($12 at Ace) and I start cutting. It takes me about a week to cut a cord if I'm consistent. Then I take my sledge with the splitter head ($30 with the fiberglass handle), and I split it. One summer of this and I end up with 4-6 cords which my wife gleefully burns as fast as she can to keep the house nice and warm. The only maintenance is setting the teeth with a pair of pliers once in a while (except once when I left the saw out in the weather for a month and had to spend $4 for a new blade). Woolstar (dwoolstar.blogspot.com) (Reply to this) (Parent)