I'm interested, but I'm not buying a Duramax just yet.

Making biodiesel on the farm

CORVALLIS, Ore. -- Thanks to an Oregon State University professor and his chemical engineering students, farmers may some- day be able to produce biodiesel fuel right on their own farms.

All that's needed now is someone to put everything together.

Professor Goran Jovanovic, 57, a native Yugoslavian who earned his doctorate degree in chemical engineering at OSU in 1980, said he had farmers in mind when he came up with the idea for a small chemical reactor that uses alcohol and vegetable oil to produce biodiesel.

"We've been doing all kinds of things with these microreactors and one day we said, 'How about if we try making biodiesel,'" Jovanovic said.

As he puts it, the credit card-thin plastic reactors are capable of helping to free farmers not only from the stranglehold of OPEC but dependence on the traditional American fuel delivery system as well.

"There are entities that wouldn't like to see this, and entities that do not understand it," he said.

Essentially, the reactors, which can range in size from less than a square inch to several square inches, use tiny, parallel channels no larger in diameter than a human hair, to bring the alcohol and vegetable oil into contact with each other in the presence of a sodium hydroxide catalyst.

What results is not only a tiny stream of 100 percent biodiesel fuel, but also glycerin, the latter having uses in making soaps and even fossil fuel-free plastics.

The microreactors, each of which produces only a minute amount of biodiesel, are designed to be used with thousands of others of the same size in a single, integrated system.

Arranged this way, a unit about the size of a computer printer and costing $1,000 to $5,000 could produce as much as 50,000 to 100,000 gallons of biodiesel a year.

Jovanovic said that the energy world, which depends on billion dollar infrastructures, hundreds of thousands of employees and massive equipment to find, produce and deliver fuels, is probably not ready for the biodiesel microreactor.

"Well, these are challenging times, and we are challenging that idea. Think of a world where individuals will be empowered to produce their own energy. That world will look different and I would say would be a little more free than it is today."

I'm thinking the professor should get it working before he worries too much about the world not being ready for it. There are only a few hundred hurdles this thing has to overcome for it to be viable. Not the least of which is how you keep the "parallel channels no larger in diameter than a human hair" from clogging with trash and/or glycerin. This ain't jumping water after all.*

Any time there is an alternative energy breakthrough announced, the 48 month rule applies. After all, the Japanese solved the biodiesel problem 6 months ago.

* The whole internet and that's the only link I could find on how laminar flow is used to make jumping water. Go figure.