Girl Mark is in town this week and will be teach two biodiesel homebrew classes in Ft. Lauderdale. In the biodiesel community, Girl Mark is a celebrity. She even written a book, Biodiesel Homebrew Guide.
You have an option of one of two courses, a short 1-day course this Friday, December 1 from 10 am – 4 pm, or a comprehensive 2-day course this weekend, Dec 2-3 (also from 10 am – 4 pm).
Here’s what she told me about the courses:
Learn to make your own high-quality biodiesel fuel from waste restaurant
fryer oil, and build the equipment to do so at home.
In the two-day weekend class, we’ll cover the basic process, safety, the
chemistry of quality control, quality testing, fixing emulsions made in
washing, dealing with bad quality/high free fatty acid oil, dewatering
oil and biodiesel, ethanol biodiesel, disposing of wash water and
glycerine, and techniques to improve your process (glycerine remix
prewash, two-stage production). If you have already experimented with
making biodiesel, we’ll cover a lot of troubleshooting and
problem-repairing techniques.
The Friday class is a shorter version of the two-day class and will
include less hands-on time and may skip a few the advanced topics, for
those who can’t attend a weekend class.
At the very end of the two-day class, we’ll also build some processors
similar to the Appleseed processor.
Sign up for the classes here: 1 day $60 (Friday, Dec 1), 2 days $120 (Saturday-Sunday, Dec 2-3). They are located in Ft. Lauderdale right off of I-95 on Stirling Rd. When you register you will receive an email with the exact location, suggested reading materials, and even what to wear.
Still not sure? Read what some past class participants have to say. You can see more about Girl Mark and Biodiesel at GirlMark.com and BiodieselCommunity.org.
One Response to “Get Ready for a Biodiesel Weekend”
Homebrew biodiesel sounds like fun, but not something this tiny apartment dweller can get into. I could just imagine my landlord:
LL: What the hell is going on in the bathroom?
NFK: Oh nothing, just a water heater, some methanol and lye, a bubble wash, storage tanks and some glycerin waste.
LL: That’s it, I’m calling the cops, yer outta here!
At this point all I really want is a used VW Golf TDI Hatchback. 42mpg city and the diesel engine lasts forever, plus generous low-end torque keeps it peppy. Unfortunately, they seem to be rarer than hen’s teeth in Florida. I guess hatchback + diesel = nojoy in this state.