Links & Projects

Hitchhiker's Guide to Biodiesel

At least until the end of this year, we're going to focus on biodiesel. This fits with the mission of A42: it is an open-source project, and is appropriate to the formation of a community or cooperative structure. Also, we have a couple of people who are helping with the writing and projects. Gadgetarius, who lives in Flagstaff Arizona, is already hearing talk from others about forming at least two community projects to make fuel on a larger scale. Obviously, this is an example of approprate technology, for at least five reasons which come to mind immediately:

  • It lowers our dependence on foreign petrochemical products.
  • It helps the family budget.
  • It is environmentally friendly.
  • It's another model and step towards decentralization, "Small is Beautiful", and "Economics as if people mattered".
  • It puts responsibility at the personal level and makes politics redundant.

Biodiesel Links

This is from Mother Earth News boards.

Dennis Weaver promoting Bio Diesel: Bio-diesel is fully biodegradable and is made from natural renewable resources. Bio-diesel smells as subtle as olive oil, is less toxic than table salt and as biodegradable as sugar. Bio-diesel is kinder to the environment as it eliminates the black smoke and fumes normally associated with diesel engines...

Connect to Bio-diesel Users in your area:
http://biodiesel.infopop.cc/eve/ubb.x?a=cfrm&s=447

Chemistry of Biodiesel

One of the things we want to be able to do is make our own biodiesel fuel from waste vegetable oil. There are lots of resources available to make it in batches from used oil. You can get the oil from hamburger joints or Chinese restaurants. We also want to explore other possibilities, notably continuous processes or new processes.

The basic process of converting waste oil to biodiesel is called esterification:

Carboxylic acids react readily with alcohols in
the presence of catalytic amount of mineral acids to yield compounds called
esters.  The process is called Esterification:

The mechanism of the acid-catalyzed esterification
is as follows:

The carbonyl oxygen is protonized so that the carbon
can be more likely attacked by the relatively weaker alcohol nucleophile:

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Airport Acronyms

Here's a useful little resource for dealing with the beaurecrats who run around and give airports weird acronyms: AirNav.

Now you can at least spell which airport you're going to.

HoboTraveler.com - A Life Less Normal

Another hitchhiker who is more energetic than I has a site called HoboTraveler.com. Definitely worth a visit if you have even an occasional twinge of Wanderlust. From the homepage:

Links for WRT54G Linux Hacks (Update)

I just bought one of these for a project which I don't have time to do right now. I am posting these links mostly for myself but perhaps there are others who can use them.

Internet Protocol Links

Contains lots of useful links if you want to investigate the Internet protocols, at the Topology.org site.

Network and Wireless Downloads

Useful links to download FLOSS:

Network and Wireless Downloads

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