Biofuels-related articles of interest

Given various other time demands we're not blogging much these days, but in case anyone is interested we do regularly throw links and snippets of articles into a Google Notebook that is available here as a webpage and here as a RSS feed. The kinds of things that end up in there are AZ-related biofuels news, algae biofuels news, WVO-related articles, agriculture stuff, policy and legislative developments, etc. The links can be fairly random -- the only real criteria is that something about a particular article caught our attention and we wanted to share it with each other. If anyone else out there finds this useful, enjoy.

Torrey Kolesar joining DBI

Another piece of exciting news for DBI (in addition to the release of our regulatory white paper) is that Torrey Kolesar will be joining us as an intern this summer. Torrey is a junior in ASU's Barrett Honors College, where he is studying chemical engineering and finance. Torrey was part of a groundbreaking effort in Ghana, Africa to develop a biofuel infrastructure based on Jatropha feedstocks, and is co-author of a biofuels wiki hosted by ASU. We're thrilled to have Torrey on board.

Torrey will be leading a project to assess the current state of biofuels feedstocks in Arizona. The goal of the project is to analyze WVO, agricultural and algae feedstocks, assessing issues such as current market structure, supply/demand, costs, and feasibility. Our plan is to publish the results of Torrey's research as a white paper, and to host a meeting at ASU SkySong in the early fall where Torrey can present and discuss his results with interested parties.

We're also hoping that Torrey will contribute to this blog, and envision that he'll participate in some of the other projects we have underway.

Torrey can be contacted by email at torrey@desertbiofuels.org.

AZ Biodiesel Regulatory Environment white paper

We're very pleased to announce that "version 1.0" of our DBI white paper Arizona Biodiesel Regulatory Environment is available for download in a number of different formats, linked from our DBI home page at http://desertbiofuels.org, under the "Key 2008 Projects" header. The HTML version is here.

Deep thanks and kudos to author Sam West, who did an amazing job pulling the paper together.

Thanks as well to AZ Biodiesel, whose generous support of the ASU Technology Ventures Clinic helped make the paper possible.

We expect that the white paper will be a living document that will be revised regularly. The information in the document is not comprehensive or complete, but in the spirit of running code our hope is that it can serve as a starting point for deeper discussions among the AZ biofuels community.