By Russ, on September 25th, 2008
The process of converting vegetable oil into fuel is called Transesterification. Transesterification of a vegetable oil was conducted as early as 1853 by scientists E. Duffy and J. Patrick.
In organic chemistry, transesterification is the process of exchanging the alkoxy group of an ester compound with another alcohol. These reactions are often catalyzed by the addition of an acid or base.
Transesterification is used in the synthesis of polyester, in which diesters undergo transesterification with diols to form macromolecules. For example, dimethyl terephthalate and ethylene glycol react to form polyethylene terephthalate and methanol, which is evaporated to
…….Click Will you be filling your tank at the chip shop? …. to continue reading
By Russ, on September 22nd, 2008
I received an interesting comment on my posting “Identifying stars while navigating at night…”
The comment was “I operate at the opposite end of the spectrum from electronics in one sense, but I still think that electronics has a valuable role to play in helping us to understand nature. I use the Stellarium software regularly and think it is a great example of nature and technology not being enemies.“…and it was made by a very accomplished navigator Tristan Gooley.
Tristan has long held a passion in natural navigation and
…….Click Natural Navigation…no batteries included …. to continue reading
By Russ, on September 21st, 2008
Sailors are not gloating at the fuel price hike that all boaters will face on November 1st. Although we use a fraction of the fuel that our motor boat cousins do there is still a sense of outrage at the injustice of charging what was meant to be a road duty for vehicles that dont use roads!.
HMRC have announced that we can declare a 60/40 ratio of engine to domestic heating use for diesel purchased. In other words for every 100 litres purchased, 40 litres will be subject to the current rate of duty – 9.69 pence per litre at
…….Click Diesel Fuel Price 60/40 …. to continue reading
By Russ, on September 20th, 2008
Bilge pumps are like flares… you never need them until you REALLY need them, and when you do, you will wish you had 2 fitted!
The recent test of bilge pumps carried out by Profs. at Southampton Solent University for Practical Boat Owner has a few gems in it. I didn’t realise for instance that the recommended discharge point is at the stern just like the engine exhaust. The discharge pipe has to be as short as possible because the energy required to overcome friction can exceed the energy required to lift the water!.
Most of the
…….Click Which bilge pump? …. to continue reading
By Russ, on September 17th, 2008
When I do a passage plan, especially one which involves one of even two changes of tide, I would count myself lucky to plan to within 1 or 2 nautical miles – relying on adjusting the plan as the passage develops and then pilotage when nearing the destination.
The Wikipedia entry (from which this great graphic was borrowed!) tells us that after the US DOD imposed selective availability program was turned off, the largest error in GPS is usually the unpredictable delay through the ionosphere. The phase difference error in the normal GPS amounts to between 2
…….Click How many decimal places do you need? …. to continue reading
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