Bently Agrowdynamics - Progressive and sustainable agricultural practices with crop, cattle, and compost production - A Bently Family Company.
Bently still innovating after all these years -
12 November 2004 — Bently Pressurized Bearing Co. is building a facility for the manufacture of diesel fuel. The plant is being built a couple hundred yards west of the Science Park and will be ready for production in 2005.
This fuel is a methyl ester made from used cooking oil, which I have been buying for 40 cents per gallon for a couple of years. This fuel is very close to the same fuel value as regular diesel fuel. However, it has no problem with sulfur compounds. Regular diesel may contain sulfur compounds, which are treated by the EPA as bad news because they can convert to acid rain.
Another process for making this fuel is to start with canola seeds. This year I grew 600 acres of canola plants and harvested the seeds; we are now preparing to put in 1,500 acres in 2005. The seeds are tiny black hard pellets that look like small BBs. They were originally called rape seeds, but are now called canola seeds. The process to convert this to methyl esters is to add potassium hydroxide or sodium hydroxide. Stir it and leave it set. It then proceeds slowly to separate itself leaving glycerin on the bottom and diesel fuel on the top. You can separate it faster with a particle filter or a centrifuge.
About Tuesday's election, I was personally pleased to see President Bush win the election for a second term. I am very accustomed to being on the losing side of elections as I most always vote the Republican ticket. Candidate Kerry is an excellent debater, however, I don't attribute much value to this feature. President Bush seems to have a problem understanding that we have a terrible inflation, as Ross Perot tried to point out in the 2000 election.
On Thursday, Nov. 4, I received from KITCO.com, an article about John MacKay in 1865 titled, "Extra Ordinary Popular Delusions of the Madness of Crowds." Both Morgan Stanley Investment Co. with offices in Reno and Kitco are urging people to buy gold while they can still buy it at a good price.
A brilliant Russian lady, Ayn Rand, authored "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged." She also authored a book called "Capitalism: A Misunderstood Principle," which no one ever heard of even though her other books are very famous. Four chapters of capitalism are written by Alan Greenspan whom Bush has re-appointed to continue to steer the Federal Reserve until 2006.
Whereas I believe and agree that it is mandatory for the United States to police the world to remove such criminals as Saddam Hussein, I have the general impression that President Bush does not understand this present inflation that we are encountering. I am gearing my company to survive major shifts in the economy to be successful during this period of severe inflation that we have encountered.
Bently Pressurized Bearing Co. is getting customers and is succeeding very nicely with them. We recently produced a pressurized bearing for a methane refrigeration system whose purpose is to make liquid methane from gaseous methane that originates directly from oil wells. The customer for this was not a military secret customer, as I believe, but a large-scale California rancher who needed liquid methane for his trucks and other vehicles. The GE Rotoflow engineer on this job tells me that this machine is performing beautifully and produces 30 percent more methane than originally calculated by the thermodynamics engineer. This machine is a tiny rotor system that rotates at 77,400 rpm. It replaced a magnetic bearing designed by a French company, which never ran successfully for a year and a half. It is rumored that they have been purchased by British Oxygen in the United Kingdom. I believe that my company has a much better bearing design.
I celebrate my 80th birthday with a total of eight parties and I am really enjoying it even though I expected the 80th birthday to be very dull. I am still busy absorbing the many marvelous gifts.
— Don Bently is a Minden resident and owner of Bently Pressurized Bearing Co.
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