I have 7 years of experience in oleochemistry, high FFA oil processing, biodiesel production, biodiesel plant design and construction. I am a recognised authority on the commercial development and production of medium scale biodiesel plants. Before this I was an IT professional in the field of Database Design and Management. I have an academic background and a Master degree in Cognitive Sciences. I worked for the Royal Dutch Shell group as a Cognitive Ergonomist.

My particular experience in the field of oleochemistry includes:

Holland, 2002. My first experience with biodiesel technology was the adaptation of a commercial biodiesel reactor made by Savoia (Argentina) which originally was designed for use with soy oil. The modification was needed in order to process used cooking oil. I also modified the capacity from 400 L biodiesel per day to 2000 L per day by using a static mixer. I collected and melted my own yellow grease from restaurants for obvious economic reasons.

Germany, 2003. I build my own biodiesel plant for 6000 L biodiesel per day production capacity. It was specialized for the treatment of industrial yellow/brown grease. I operated the plant for a Dutch waste oil collector and melter. Here I learned how to manage the logistics of collecting and melting of the waste cooking oil on an industrial scale.  Important issues to solve were the high dirt, water and %FFA content in the collected grease resulting in high soap contents in the produced biodiesel.

Techniques I used included multi-stage filtration, steam stripping, settling, static
mixing, vacuum distillation and solvent extraction.

Holland, 2004. After the biodiesel plant was moved to Rotterdam I included a centrifuge in the process in order to dry wash and clean the biodiesel without the use of water. This speeds up the process considerable and also the final quality of the biofuel is a lot more stable. In this way it was also possible to winterize the biodiesel. The use of industrial catalysts like NaOCH3 and KOCH3 further improved the speed and quality of the transesterification process.

Sweden, 2005. The Swedish biodiesel company Ageratec A.S. visited me in Rotterdam to see my dry washing cleaning method in combination with my production process. As a result of this visit I redesigned 2 machines in Sweden with my technology for dry washing and the static mixer blending process using the advanced industrial catalysts NaOCH3 and KOCH3. The production capacity of the redesigned machines improved with 80%.

My method for cleaning biodiesel with a centrifuge in order to meet the EN14214 norm requirements has been patented by Ageratec.

Norway, 2006. For the Norwegian biodiesel company Biodrivstoff A.S. I developed a new additional process to deal with high FFA oil from both the Norwegian fish industry and Dutch waste cooking oil collectors (yellow/brown grease). This process is known as acid esterification or acid pre-treatment and transforms the free fatty acids into biodiesel. The catalyst used was sulphuric acid in a concentration up to 1% w/w FFA. This step is followed by two other steps using the normal basic transesterification process involving an alkaline catalyst. The %FFA of this type of oil is around 15% by weight.

England, 2007. For a group of private investors I went to the JIC Genome Laboratory based at the John Innes Centre in Norwich to study the cultivation/harvesting of algae blooms in the wild and the use of a ship based bio refinery to produce syngas. Syngas can be used to generate electricity or be converted into methanol. By using a bio refinery the whole algae is used (oil, starch, protein and cellulose) to maximise yield.

Argentina, 2008. For the Romanian company Eurografica S.R.L. I develop business plans for the cultivation of Camelina sativa in Chubut, Argentina and Rapeseed Oil Extraction in Yunnan, China. In order to write these plans and understand the ins and outs of oil extraction I had to visit several suppliers of medium sized solvent extraction machines for oil seeds.

Argentina, 2009. For the Swiss company Global Agricultural Resources AG (GAR) I study the mechanical cultivation of a perennial variety of Castor bean (Ricinus communis) and Pongamia pinnata in the northern provinces of Chaco and Misiones including the purchase of a new oil solvent extraction plant (120 TPD). This year 10.000 Ha are cultivated with Castor.

A full Curriculum Vitae is available on request.