New direction

Due to my tendency to experience rather than record, I've been slacking on blogging. Which, for a wannabe blogger is a sin. Instead, I'm broadening the scope of topics.

Here you will find a more complete view of me and mine. I do consider myself a god, but I also consider myself an insect. Both are simultaneously true despite being (because of being?) logically inconsistent. Human minds work associatively more than logically. Those who believe themselves to be purely logical creatures (as I have before) are less powerful than those who can be fully logical, fully illogical, or any middle combination. You'll find whatever comes to mind, whenever it comes to mind, here. Welcome to my mind dump! Have a look around.

Next topic at hand:
I've escaped wage-slavery, my time is no longer measured in dollars and cents. I'm working towards a goal of living sustainably mostly-off-grid altogether, eventually. We run a business, this is going to be a whole lot of work! We have a whole bunch of godly tasks in front of us. This is only fitting for a couple of gods, naturally.

There's a whole lot that goes into this. Our living arrangements are big, but they're on hold until we acquire our own plot of land. Our food is largely in the same boat, I'm living on someone else's property and as such I can only have a small garden. I already have a compost pile that is hot and active most of the time, though I'm having a raccoon problem recently...

So, until the land is available, my task is to successfully master the process of producing biofuel for the work truck. In time, we plan to trade my car in for a diesel Jetta or something similar, and acquire diesel fueled equipment for the company.

I'm starting with high quality materials in small amounts until I'm comfortable with the process, with the intention of building my own processor. This will stay relatively small (20 gallons or less at a time) until, again, we acquire our land. Currently, I'm going with a simple single stage base reaction using methanol. Eventually I'd like to make the switch to using self-produced ethanol, as methanol is yet another petrol product. The ethanol is simply adds a whole difficulty level to the processing of the biofuel, though, which I'm not quite ready for!

I've decided to use KOH instead of NaOH for the lye. It's also possible to make the lye at home, but it's difficult to measure the strength and purity and chemical content and, as an added bonus, the byproduct from using the more pure KOH is compostable! Not much KOH is needed, and it's not particularly expensive. The homemade lye has enough unknown chemical components that, at least for the foreseeable future, I'm going to avoid it.

I have gotten my information from a whole bunch of places, but for the most part I'm following the beginner's instructions found at Journey to Forever, who seem to be a really great resource for anyone looking to improve the quality of life for the planet! Really neat stuff they do over there, they are worth checking out for all sorts of reasons.

Ok, that being said. I have everything I need except the KOH, which I ordered online from a soapmaking distributor. With the holiday this weekend, I'm hoping that it shows up tomorrow.

The methanol I have for my first small test batch is HEET gas-line antifreeze, which it turns out is exactly the same stuff I'd get from the racetrack or if I ordered it online from a biofuel distributor. I'm using two #2 plastic containers, the proper sort of plastic for this kind of chemical reaction. Who would have figured that the jugs my kitty litter comes in would turn out to be the right sort of thing to live again as biofuel processing mini-tanks?

A completely different consideration, but easily as important, is the legality of the whole deal. Again, because of the holiday weekend, I wasn't able to get ahold of anyone at the PA tax office to ask my questions about the road tax and whether I need a fuel blender's license, as I've heard about from other states. This/these phonecall(s) will be made tomorrow.

As it is, I'm doing some waiting right now. I invite you to come on back and see what happens! I'll be posting some pictures of the process and anything else that comes up in the next few days.

I think the proper focus will allow this god to be a better blogger.

Cheers! Live free and happy.

Autexousious