New Orleans My crash course in the chemistry and advantages of bio-diesel started with a phone call almost a year ago from a union steward I knew who worked for the City of Santa Barbara in California.  He and a buddy had spent a world of time and no small amount of money building a mobile bio-diesel fueling operation, and they wanted to figure out a way to get it to New Orleans to help in the recovery efforts.  What a concept?  What an opportunity!

Nothing is ever as simple as it seems, so it has taken us more than a year for everyone to get on the same page and figure out how to make everyone happy, but the light is now beaming at the end of the tunnel and likely by Labor Day, we’ll part a 4 x 8 trailer with 800 pounds of bio-diesel gear somewhere in the 9^th Ward, I hope.

The rig can produce up to 20,000 gallons capacity a month by converting cooking grease into fuel.  If there is one place in the world that produces a huge supply of cooking grease, tell me it’s not New Orleans, so if we can put all of these pieces together, we’re going to be “cookin’ with grease!”

Of course there are a lot of slips between the cup and the lip.  The equipment needs some tune up in Cali before the pickup.  We have to work out the charitable donation papers for ACORN International to accept the contribution.  We need to get the big Suburban or something similar out to Santa Barbara to roll the operation back to New Orleans.  In the meantime we need to find a location, hopefully in our beloved 9^th Ward, where we can park this baby and locate extra storage tanks and everything else that’s needed.  We need to reach out to the hospitality world to get the grease and to our friends in high and low places to agree to use the product to make this operation sustainable as we begin the evangelical work.

Yeah, like I said, it’s a long list, so this is just the scout patrol giving out advance notice and some teasers (check out that picture!) that this is coming, and it’s going to be big!

Ps.  You want to help in New Orleans to get this going or make it happen elsewhere, give a holler to wade@chieforganizer.org.