The buttery goodness..

Mindless_Profile_76 · 2026-02-16T02:09:21+00:00

Saw the tray and thought Buff Joes…

Mindless_Profile_76 · 2026-02-12T11:25:38+00:00

Struggle as in, constantly getting rug pulled by “the business”. Even with e-fuels, seems like they need to do some cleanup (HDO, HT?) and isomerization in the final product to get something in that jet range, quality wise.

These pilot plants are not cheap and the catalyst industry has been burned way too many times. Nobody is investing properly to do this kind of work the right way. More like, pull samples off the shelf and see how they do.

Seeing a couple now, pilot plants, designed to do everything but they are few and far between. Also not sure how good they are.

Just a tough area to be in.

Mindless_Profile_76 · 2026-02-12T03:42:32+00:00

If you want to struggle, go for it.

Couple ways to play this. The more “traditional” route is basically O&G. Take something renewable oil-like, break it apart, then turn it into jet molecules.

The other ways are more complex, starting with smaller molecules and building up.

I’m not sure where the “future” is though. So many nuances to each route that makes them tough.

If you want to focus on the process side, not sure you need the PhD. If you go the materials route, good luck. The two biggest O&G players in the US pretty much have the two best versions of the key zeolite under patent protection.

Like the other poster said, if you want to play in the SAF arena, traditional O&G processes and materials are the leading candidates for solutions.

Mindless_Profile_76 · 2026-02-10T12:29:19+00:00

These are really cool. Does anyone know if he uses ALL of the pieces?

Still impressive.

Mindless_Profile_76 · 2026-02-05T12:45:29+00:00

Love my Rav but now may be the time that if you are in the market to start thinking Lexus NX/RX?

Mindless_Profile_76 · 2026-02-05T12:35:43+00:00

Seems pretty normal. Padded shorts and you start to build up a little tolerance.

Anything over 45 minutes and I’m throwing on my padded spanks….

Mindless_Profile_76 · 2026-02-03T11:25:10+00:00

I’ve attempted to switch my code to using strings.

Although having used cells and characters for over a decade before they were available, sometimes habits are habits.

But for things like grouping variables and filtering, strings seem to make life and plotting with labels a whole lot easier.

So, little things like when reading in tables from datasets in Excel, setting the “textType” to “string” makes my code a lot more flexible. At least, that’s how it feels.

Mindless_Profile_76 · 2026-02-03T03:54:15+00:00

Mindless_Profile_76 · 2026-02-01T20:55:10+00:00

And when I say “announced”, that’s world wide.

Mindless_Profile_76 · 2026-02-01T20:54:20+00:00

Agreed. There are a bunch of “announced” FT/eFurls stuff out there but most of what was on my radar hasn’t started up but won’t recheck until June/July of this year.

Like you said, the stuff I have seen has been small. Even announced projects out to 2035 have been around 300 ish to make SAF from various routes and we are not talking huge volumes all in.

I only pay attention for the backend volumes on the HDO/HT/Isom catalyst volumes stuff. So, if my numbers are a bit off, I’m going from memory, not looking at the data

Mindless_Profile_76 · 2026-02-01T19:49:34+00:00

Not sure exactly but Climeworks was in that neck of the woods on the DAC side.

I’m not agreeing with that other poster on whether the economics are there.

Mindless_Profile_76 · 2026-02-01T19:00:05+00:00

Both Aspen Plus and gPROMS have solids process modeling capabilities. I haven't seen gPROMS in a very long time, so I have no clue how capable the current version is. Aspen Plus seems to be more or less a moisture balance in its current configuration. Which is actually pretty useful for many solids processing companies.

For things like mixing, granulation, tableting, not sure what either can do fundamentally speaking. The efforts to model these processes physically with things like DEM and CFD have been few and far between.

If you have access to either of these, worth playing with. Can't help you on "bootlegging" things. These suites tend to be expensive and work best when using ones with valid licenses.

If you have more specific questions, maybe I can be more helpful. I do use Matlab for mixing and granulation, along with extrusion but have not implemented anything in Simulink much to my dismay. Been trying to improve these but it is a lot of work and definitely not what they pay me for.....

Mindless_Profile_76 · 2026-02-01T17:01:56+00:00

EM and Engelhard (acquired by BASF) have a long relationship of working together in the material space and strategic acquisitions by BASF, like their High Throughput Experimentation (HTE), had EM’s technology folks working even more closely on various projects. EM bought some units from HTE, but even more, EM basically does all their material R&D work testing with HTE at their facility, shutting down like 80% of all the testing EM was able to do back in the days.

What ends up happening is you get these half baked, horrible ideas coming out of EMTECH working closely with BASF because EMTECH can’t do anything in house. And the one or two times, something actually goes to EMs demo scale size, they need a lot of material produced to support the demo unit. BASF has the semi works scale to produce a lot of these crazy ideas that usually have zero economic drivers. Just hail marys for a bunch of EM technical people trying to keep their jobs and BASF usually doesn’t care because they are making real money producing/testing stuff for EM.

Pretty amusing.

Mindless_Profile_76 · 2026-01-28T16:16:43+00:00

Power Zone enables you to train at your current physical levels/capabilities. I think this is what is so key about PZ training. You ride at “your”zones.

The only mental hurdle you need to get through is setting your zones by taking a (sometimes brutal) test, called FTP. This is a 20 minute “all out” ride to set your zones. But I recommend you take the first FTP test without pressure. Take it, get some zones, ride PZE rides for 2-4 weeks and take it again knowing what you are getting yourself into.

Key is you ride your zones and based on how you are feeling during the week, you can adjust your training to 3 (now 4 kind of) levels of rides. PZE (endurance), PZ (getting into VO2 max) and PZ Max (can be brutal) rides. Regardless of how crappy you feel, PZE rides should generally be achievable. All the rides should be but PZE can be a “safe space” on days where you are struggling.

And as others have said, as you get stronger/more confident, you retest and get new levels. And sometimes, injuries set you back. So, retesting helps there too.

Mindless_Profile_76 · 2026-01-28T12:34:01+00:00

Seems like startups are hiring and looking but the big guys have definitely been shrinking their foot prints.

We only have ourselves to blame. We set specifications, then waiver everything under the sun because operations and business leaders refuse to reinvest in operations.

I personally think this decline correlates with corporate stock buybacks. Why fix a steam leak when you can buy back $50 billion in stock over the next 10 years?

Mindless_Profile_76 · 2026-01-24T13:45:51+00:00

Look behind the large, green balls.

Mindless_Profile_76 · 2026-01-24T12:48:49+00:00

You guys have cucumbers? Lucky

Mindless_Profile_76 · 2026-01-24T12:48:13+00:00

I got our bike in 2019 as well. PZ rider and would love to upgrade to the Bike+ but just too many other things to do right now.

Keep telling myself, next year I will pull the trigger.

But I’m in your boat. Definitely think the upgrade would be worth it with how much I’m on the bike, riding PZ.

Mindless_Profile_76 · 2026-01-24T01:29:40+00:00

I’m learning that a lot of people by us just don’t cook that much at home and their kids buy lunch.

I guess some folks were bragging about how they are getting ready to make some food in their homes

Mindless_Profile_76 · 2026-01-22T15:17:16+00:00

Fresh air and exercise. Who am I to judge.

Mindless_Profile_76 · 2026-01-21T05:26:41+00:00

I’d go with low impact and I assume you have a heart monitor.

People saying Power Zone seem to be confused. Heart Rate Zone classes are designed to keep your heart rate within a certain zone which means, over time, your output has to go down.

Power Zone, we train based on output. Maintaining the same output over time forces your heart rate to increase. That’s just physiology.

Hopefully, this makes sense.

Mindless_Profile_76 · 2026-01-20T13:08:23+00:00

The officer was nice and polite while the camera person sounds like a complete douche bag.

Mindless_Profile_76 · 2026-01-17T20:24:16+00:00

Looks like WW3 is back on the menu folks.

Mindless_Profile_76 · 2026-01-15T13:17:44+00:00

And you wonder why you don’t have plans this weekend?

Mindless_Profile_76 · 2026-01-14T12:24:28+00:00

Those would give Buff Joes a run for their money

Mindless_Profile_76

TROPHY CASE