I love having interesting friends with knowledge about stuff I’m clueless about. Tonight I was provided with a Chem 101 class via iChat. My good friend, occasional comment provider here, and real live trained professional Chemist, Dan O. was the professor and I the student. Over the course of three hours I learned more than I ever have about a handful of chemicals I NEED to know about if I ever want to achieve some measure of energy independence.
The conversation started when I mentioned my initial test of a batch of veggie oil in preparation for making BioDiesel. I was having trouble doing the tests. The primers on BioDiesel prep were not written in a way that I was comprehending very well, and there was some inconsistencies from one write-up to another. Dan cleared it all up for me. His intimate knowledge of all the elements, processes, and reactions involved allowed him to explain it to me in terms I could grasp.
He also filled me in on some safety procedures, storage strategies, and other bigger picture items sorely lacking from the reading I’ve done to date. I started the evening a bit frustrated, and finished it feeling more confident and motivated to start again.
Thanks Dan!
I will take you up on the invitation to visit and take a look at the setup. I’d like to document it and maybe put it on my web page (when I get a web page!) along with the financial analysis processes for analyzing how to finance a solar photovoltaic system.
By the way, thanks for the nice compliment here!