Bio Products Opportunity

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Original post by drnjbmd

Forget renewable energy for a moment.  For the past few weeks I have been inundated with art.

Years ago I was invited to create a chess set for the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore.  It is an exceedingly cool place, which celebrates the work of “Outsider” artists. The particular show was called “Out of This World.”

At the time I was a full time metal sculptor, running Moncure Chessworks.  We did a life sized chess set comprised of “Angels vs. Aliens.”

It was a hit, and stayed in their permanent collection.  I had a blast at the opening, dining with Barbara Lorie and Margaret Pollard, who drove up from Chatham County.  We had a wild night on Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.

And I basically forgot about it.

Until a month ago.  Through the loud background noise of my biodiesel life came some cryptic messages about “windows in New York.”  There were release forms and people calling looking for information, and a call from Rebecca Hoffberger herself looking for biographical details.

It was wild.  My friend Gary likes to point out that the only people included in the American Visionary Art Museum are crazy.  Clearly he is wrong about that.  And while it might be true that I may have been the only artist in the show that had not actually been abducted by aliens, “Outsider” artists have a proclivity for the divine and have often been touched by the gods.

The greatest collection of “Outsider” art in the area is surely housed at Jim Massey’s Holly Hill Daylily farm in Haywood, NC.  That’s just on the edge of Moncure, and it’s 18th Annual Daylily Festival is currently underway.  Anyone who has never been has yet to experience the full flavor of Chatham County.  Jim was the first art collector to acquire one of my pieces, and I am certain that when he gets the news he will immediately order a re-appraisal of his entire collection.

So my sculptural chess pieces shipped from Baltimore to the display windows of Bergdorf Goodman, which apparently is known for its impressive art displays.  Not being that fashionable, and now spending my life immersed in free fatty acids, I had never heard of them.

Yet I seem to be a minority in that.  Suddenly I am hearing from art collectors.  People I once longed to impress are finally impressed. My daughter Jessalyn’s advertising firm made a field trip to the windows. I had forgotten about the urgent need to break into the New York art scene.

Drat.

I wonder if I am destined to always leave things too soon.  By the time the Internet “bubble” arrived, I had left the technology space to do art.  By the time I “made” the windows of Bergdorf Goodman, I was submerged in sustainability.  Sustainability is welcome to hit any time.  I’m still in it from sun up to sun down.

I wasn’t able to attend the New York opening.  I was in London, looking at an electrical generator which was running on glycerin.  And hanging out with some dear friends (most of which were utterly familiar with the windows of Bergdorf Goodman, and startled by my ignorance).

Oh well.

The last art piece I worked on was a giant mushroom on the dam of the pond.  I find it a good place to reflect on how I am not crazy, how I never seem to catch the wave just right, and how I might not be destined to make the big time.

Which is OK.  I rather like feeding the fish in the pond, and going to work, and playing in the sandbox which is our eco-industrial endeavor…

Original post by Lyle

It looks like the City of Raleigh is trying their hand at growing some energy crops with waste water.  Piedmont is standing by to help them crush the seed and turn the oil into fuel.

Original post by Lyle

I just returned from a trip to London, where I had the exquisite opportunity to read Harm de Blij’s The Power of Place.

It is a fascinating book.  In many ways it is a counter point to Thomas Friedman.   I’m a big Friedman fan.  His last book  Hot, Flat and Crowded was a manifesto for what America needs to be doing right now.

And I am with him.

But The Power of Place puts Friedman into a new perspective.

De Blij is a geographer.  And a demographer.  And an academic. One of his points is that the world is only getting “flatter” for a tiny percentage of the population.

De Blij borrows heavily from Buckminster Fuller’s “Spaceship Earth,” and breaks down the planet’s inhabitants into “Locals,” “mobals,” and “globals.” The overwhelming percentage of people die in the same country they were born in.  He calls them “locals.”

I married a “local” girl.  That makes me an authority on the subject.  If I were a character in Meredith Wilson’s The Music Man, I would be the guy with “my foot caught in the door.”

De Blij would score me as a “mobal.”  That is, someone who crosses a national boundary in search of a better life.  A risk taker.  A place changer.  He is kind to “mobals.”  It is a much kinder term than “dirty immigrant.”

My poor daughter does not qualify as a debutante because I am an immigrant to this country.

Got it.

I am currently flirting with New Society on writing a third book.  The potential title is Industrial Evolution, and the notion of “place” is inescapable.

One of the topics I will need to cover is Chatham County’s response to our project.  As a place, Pittsboro has been forced to respond to our undertakings–many of which have never been encountered before.

Chatham County is funny.  The Internet is supposed to have offered us a flattened world.  But in Chatham it has been used to build and defend parochial views. Our online presence is characterized by armchair quarterbacks and lovers of the status quo who like to spit poison on anything new or different.

De Blij would nod in agreement.  “Flattening” doesn’t just happen. Most of the world remains as round as it ever was.  I was intrigued by the book.  I thought it was tight, well written, and certainly worth reading.  It will be in the library on Monday.  New additions to the library include: A Nation of Farmers by Sharon Astyk and Aaron Newton, The Solar Century by Jeremy Legett and Common Wealth by Jeffrey Sachs.

Original post by Lyle

I just returned from a trip to London, where I had the exquisite opportunity to read Harm de Blij’s The Power of Place.

It is a fascinating book.  In many ways it is a counter point to Thomas Friedman.   I’m a big Friedman fan.  His last book  Hot, Flat and Crowded was a manifesto for what America needs to be doing right now.

And I am with him.

But The Power of Place puts Friedman into a new perspective.

De Blij is a geographer.  And a demographer.  And an academic. One of his points is that the world is only getting “flatter” for a tiny percentage of the population.

De Blij borrows heavily from Buckminster Fuller’s “Spaceship Earth,” and breaks down the planet’s inhabitants into “Locals,” “mobals,” and “globals.” The overwhelming percentage of people die in the same country they were born in.  He calls them “locals.”

I married a “local” girl.  That makes me an authority on the subject.  If I were a character in Meredith Wilson’s The Music Man, I would be the guy with “my foot caught in the door.”

De Blij would score me as a “mobal.”  That is, someone who crosses a national boundary in search of a better life.  A risk taker.  A place changer.  He is kind to “mobals.”  It is a much kinder term than “dirty immigrant.”

My poor daughter does not qualify as a debutant because I am an immigrant to this country.

Got it.

I am currently flirting with New Society on writing a third book.  The potential title is Industrial Evolution, and the notion of “place” is inescapable.

One of the topics I will need to cover is Chatham County’s response to our project.  As a place, Pittsboro has been forced to respond to our undertakings–many of which have never been encountered before.

Chatham County is funny.  The Internet is supposed to have offered us a flattened world.  But in Chatham it has been used to build and defend parochial views. Our online presence is characterized by armchair quarterbacks and lovers of the status quo who like to spit poison on anything new or different.

De Blij would nod in agreement.  “Flattening” doesn’t just happen. Most of the world remains as round as it ever was.  I was intrigued by the book.  I thought it was tight, well written, and certainly worth reading.  It will be in the library on Monday.  New additions to the library include: A Nation of Farmers by Sharon Astyk and Aaron Newton, The Solar Century by Jeremy Legett and Common Wealth by Jefrey Sachs.

Original post by Lyle

Our grease collection business began to grow about a year ago, when Moya showed up from Kentucky.  She took a leap of faith, jumped off the stage which was her life, and we caught her.
She snatched Kate out of the intern bin and the two have formed a formidable binary star system ever since.

As part of Piedmont’s new world order, they have embarked on “Celebrity Grease Runs,” in which they load the vacuum truck with everything they need:  gloves, hoses, stingers, drums, and an extra volunteer person who rides along.

Tami was the first to participate.  She spent a long day sucking grease and allegedly impressed both Moya and Kate with her quick learning and her strong back.  Everyone was afraid she would lose a tiara in a dumpster, or break a nail, but neither happened and Tami’s stock went up as news of their successful day spread across our project.

Contrary to popular perception, you do not need to be a blonde to participate in Celebrity Grease Runs.

This morning as I trudged through the gate, I encountered Beth Turner getting ready to go suck grease.  It was a humid June morning, and she was feeling a little shiny, but her enthusiasm for the adventure ahead was palpable.

What is unclear at this point is who is the celebrity in the “Celebrity Grease Run.”  Surely both Tami and Beth are big names around town-but some argue that it is in fact Moya and Kate who have celebrity status.

We can argue about it.

In the meantime, we have a new focus on our feedstock collection efforts. With a newly polished budget, a new web presence, and a brochure coming soon, we are doing some outreach to anyone interested in gaining more intimacy with the oil collection side of our lives.

Anyone interested in going on a run, or helping out with more grease pickup points, should email greasegoddess@biofuels.coop.

Feedstock collection, it seems, like membership, volunteer projects, and local fuel sales, is growing again.

Original post by Lyle

Like the Muppets Take Manhattan…Rachel and Greg just spent the week in Denmark and here’s their report back:

I started my visit in Denmark with a stop in Aarhus, Denmark. Aarhus is the second largest city in Denmark and is home to AAK a large vegetable oil crush plant and refinery. I had the distinct privilege of touring their facility last week after meeting a contact at the most recent AOCS meeting in Orlando this year, AAK refines all the of the major edible oils- rapeseed, palm, soy, in addition to shea nut. The tour at AAK was quite impressive- being able to see operating vegetable oil hydrogenation, hexane extraction, shea nut milling, deodorization, caustic refining, and interesterification. What was particularly fascinating was the shea nut processing- see at Piedmont we often receive offer for unique feedstocks for biodiesel. Recently we got a call to purchase 55 tons of shea nut butter- this material is quite saturated and solid at room temperature. We can make methyl esters out of it although it is not likely to pass the cold soak filtration test anytime soon. Actually we would prefer to hand it out to coop members who are soap makers and massage therapists.

My friend and Aarhus tour guide, Peter, gave me the grand tour of Aarhus including the old cathedral, river area, and the local art museum. In the center of town, we stopped at a public art display with distinct climate change messaging throughout the show. Biodiesel promotion and usage is publicly known here in Denmark. Although we did not rent a diesel car, 5% biodiesel is available at public pumps with fuel provided by two Danish biodiesel producers, Emmelev and Daka. One of the producer uses animals fats for feedstock and the other uses rapeseed oil.

Over the weekend, I met up with Greg and Morgan who traveled from Moldova to Copenhagen and onto Aarhus where we began our trip to the Danish Mecca of renewable energy- the Nordisk Folkecenter for Renewable Energy. We drove north to the Jutland peninsula over long-spanning bridges and the myriad of wind turbines that provide 100% energy for Jutland.

We arrived early to Folkecenter and got the opportunity to explore the campus with its fifteen active renewable buildings or demo sites. They have a beautiful greenhouse dome, strawbale guest house, solar thermal and PV demos, several wind turbines, both small & large plus the only hydrogen filling station in Denmark. The Folkecenter also has a great small scale oilseed crushing and processing demonstration and like Piedmont they used to provide Elsbett conversion workshops as well. After spending the night at in the strawbale house, Greg, Morgan and I had the pleasure of meeting the founder of the Folkecenter, Preben Maegaard. Preben gave us the history and evolution of the folkcenter in the global renewable energy movement. The Folkecenter was founded in 1974 and for much of its operation received 1.5 million dollars (not kroners or euros) of annually baseline funding with a peak of 25 employees. In 2002 the Danish government unfortunately pulled the Folkecenter baseline funding. Now the Folkecenter is primarily an educational facility providing tours for school and industry groups. Their research efforts are focused upon a wave energy test facility.
On our way back to Copenhagen, we stopped in the world famous Legoland. Built in 1968, it is the Disneyworld of Denmark complete with lego-themed roller coaster rides. Granted Legoland is no longer owned by Lego; The Danish Legoland with its US and German locations are now US owned and operated.

Yet the primary reason for the trip to Denmark was meeting with the biodiesel group at Novozymes. Piedmont Biofuels recently received some grant funding for enzymatic biodiesel production research from the NC Biofuels Center in collaboration with the Chatham County Economic Development Corporation and Novozymes. The meeting with Novozymes team was great and Per was an excellent host. We spent the late afternoon on a walking tour in Christiana. Christiana is an autonomous zone or “free-town” that started in 1971. It is essentially a well-established community squat- full with all walks of houses, tipis, camping tent areas, restaurants, cafes, and even solar arrays. As we walked the community, Greg and I took note of similarities and differences to the “Bubble.” There is a significant amount of controversy and often protests now that the Danish government is working to “normalize” the community.

As part of our meetings in Copenhagen, Greg and I also got to visit the Chemical and Management Engineering departments at the Danish Technical University (DTU). DTU is also a collaborative partner in this sustainable biodiesel project – They are quite advanced in evaluating the life-cycle analyses (LCA) of industrial process. For this project, DTU is evaluating the LCA of both chemical catalysis and enzymatic catalysis for biodiesel production. Collaboration with DTU will help our understanding of our current energy balance research. But now that we are back- we have tons of work to do on our enzymatic project.

Original post by Rachel

For the second time this year I have taken a stab at calculating how much rainwater is in our fishpond.

Moya and Kate have done a remarkable job of populating “Cuba” with vegetables, and we have done our best to supply their garden with rainwater from the pond.

Watering gardens out of elevated totes is easy to comprehend. You can tell when you catch 275 gallons on a good rain, and you can tell when you have delivered it all to the garden.

It’s a different story for a pond.

We manually pump rainwater out of the pond into an elevated tote on a homemade water tower, and it gravity feeds Cuba. It is easy to know home much water we pump, and it is wonderful feedback on how hard it is to deliver water to where it is needed, but one of the unanswered questions is how much water is in the pond.

On both occasions I have turned to Cornell University. They have a Commercial Farm Pond Management Series that seems to provide the most clarity.

To survey the pond my friend Gary and I ran a rope from end to end and side to side. It is about 63′ by 70.’ Small pond. We then launched Sage on a kayak to take depth samples. This was daring on her part, since the pond is known to be packed full of giant catfish and water snakes. She pulled four depth samples across each axis.

Zafer, Arlo and I did the same thing earlier this year, but we lost the data.

Today the pond is down about a foot and a half. We calculated that when it is at the top of the standpipe it would hold 70K gallons of water. We have put a valve on the end of the standpipe, which allows us to raise the water level to the top of the dam. Our projection when full is 120K gallons of water.

We need to learn this stuff. If the average wasteful American consumer requires 80 gallons of water per day, it is good to know how much our unsustainable family consumes. It is fascinating to note that when pumping the water by hand, early indications are that consumption would drop precipitously.

And we need to learn this because we need to build a system for Jason and Haruka at Edible Earthscape. They are about to bring another two acres of cultivation along, and it is to be rain water powered-from a pond.

Next thing to implement is filtration. Pond water is full of algae and pollen and scum and stuff that will plug drip tape and soaker hoses. We will probably need to hold that back with sand, or something. We are not there yet.  The last issue of 15-501 Magazine featured Arlo in a rain water collection article.  While they might not print it if it wasn’t true, the reality is we have a long way to go before we have our heads around rain water delivery systems.

Once we have that figured out, we can move on drag coefficients and pressure losses and gallons per acre for maximum yield.

For now it is good to know how much water fits in a pond…

Original post by Lyle

Anand Gopal, Christian Science Monitor journalist, talks with TRNN Senior Editor Paul Jay about Afghanistan. Gopal became interested in America’s foreign policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan after several of his close friends were killed in the Sept. 9/11 attacks.

Original post by Yahoo! News Search Results for green jobs

GEORGETOWN, MA–(Marketwire - June 5, 2009) - Paradigm Tactical Products, Inc. ( PINKSHEETS : PTPC ) is pleased to announce that the company is finalizing a definitive agreement to acquire a rapidly emerging biofuels company. Paradigm Tactical Products, through a company to be announced, eminently aims to capitalize on one of the industry’s largest evolving global sectors. Emerging into a cost …

Original post by Lyle

Dow AgroSciences Canada Inc. announced today it has renewed its strategic alliance with the National Research Council Plant Biotechnology Institute (NRC-PBI) of Saskatoon for an additional five-year term. This research agreement builds on previous agreements over the past 10 years.

Original post by Lyle

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J., June 5 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ), through a new wholly-owned subsidiary, Kite Merger Sub, Inc., today will commence a cash tender offer to purchase all outstanding shares of common stock of Cougar Biotechnology, Inc.

Original post by Lyle

VIENNA, Va., June 5 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — CEL-SCI Corporation (NYSE AMEX: CVM) announced today that its collaborators at the University of Hawaii reported on data at the annual American Society for Microbiology in Philadelphia, PA. This data demonstrates that vaccines utilizing its L.E.A.P.S.(TM) (Ligand Epitope Antigen Presentation System) vaccine technology with specificity for particular …

Original post by Lyle

Paradigm Tactical Products, Inc. (Pinksheets: PTPC) is pleased to announce that the company is finalizing a definitive agreement to acquire a rapidly emerging biofuels company.

Original post by Lyle

Geneticists in China and the U.S. have sequenced the cucumber genome.

Original post by Lyle

Population growth is seriously threatening the balance between humans and environment. Deforestation, desertification and water scarcity are already having devastating effects -PS Prakasa Rao Though, today, the whole world is economically richer yet environmentally poorer than ever.

Original post by Lyle

The past year has been a tumultuous time for Northeast Biofuels Ethanol (NEB) plant in Volney, which has experienced layoffs, design flaws and bankruptcy.

Original post by Lyle

LOS ANGELES—-Cougar Biotechnology, Inc. announced today that its board of directors has unanimously agreed to recommend that stockholders tender their shares to Johnson &amp Johnson at the previously announced price of $43.00 per share.

Original post by Lyle

This week’s top DVD releases include the Oscar-nominated Revolutionary Road, which reunites Titanic′s Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. Also of note: the World War II drama Defiance and the music documentary Fillmore: The Final Days.

Original post by Yahoo! News Search Results for green jobs

YOQNEAM, ISRAEL–(Marketwire - June 5, 2009) - Given Imaging ( NASDAQ : GIVN ) today announced that Yuval Yanai, Chief Financial Officer, will present at the Eighth Annual Needham & Company Biotechnology and Medical Technology Conference taking place June 10-11, 2009 in New York. Mr. Yanai’s presentation is scheduled for Wednesday, June 10 at 3:00 pm ET. To access a live webcast of this …

Original post by Lyle

Two local homeowners say they’ve been taken for a ride by a local contractor because they say they paid the man for the job he was doing, but then, they say he disappeared without finishing the work.

Original post by Yahoo! News Search Results for green jobs

Dow AgroSciences Canada Inc. announced today it has renewed its strategic alliance with the National Research Council Plant Biotechnology Institute of Saskatoon for an additional five-year term.

Original post by Lyle

Given Imaging today announced that Yuval Yanai, Chief Financial Officer, will present at the Eighth Annual Needham & Company Biotechnology and Medical Technology Conference taking place June 10-11, 2009 in New York. Mr.

Original post by Lyle

Kochi, Jun 5 : Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) Vice-Chancellor V N Rajasekharan Pillai today noted that IT garbage was a major challenge to the world and the developing countries were being viewed as a ‘dumping ground’ for IT waste.

Original post by Lyle

No single technology will triumph in the pursuit of a “greener” auto industry, according to the world’s biggest car makers, but the future will include a mix of cars powered by electricity, hydrogen fuel-cells and bio-fuels.

Original post by Yahoo! News Search Results for green jobs