Using that leverage, she recently brought a plan she dubs “ Woman on the Moon” to the Dutch prime minister, laying out a roadmap for making hydrogen via windmills at sea, and using that hydrogen to make fertilizer (instead of gas) and steel (instead of coal). “The fact that you win such a court case also gives you the opportunity to speak regularly to the people in power, and then you bring ideas forward that sometimes they don’t have themselves,” she says. The Supreme Court ruling didn’t mark the end of Minnesma’s work. Emissions started bouncing back in 2021, and Urgenda is now demanding the government reduce emissions by 25%, minus the amount they went over last year (“Which I could also demand through the court,” she says, “but I’d rather have them doing it without me going to court, and they are totally on track for that”). The Netherlands hit that 25% reduction goal in 2020, but just barely-the pandemic and a warm winter that meant people didn’t use as much gas to heat their homes helped. Minnesma’s win marks the first Goldman honor for the Netherlands. The annual award recognizes grassroots environmental activists from each of the world’s six geographic regions: Africa, Asia, Europe, Islands and Island Nations, North America, and South and Central America. The court win reverberated around the world, and that work has made Minnesma a winner of the 2022 Goldman Environmental Prize. “We didn’t ask anything strange we simply said, you have signed. “It’s an enormous relief when after so many years, it’s finally a done deal, and the government really has to do what it has promised to do,” she says. And when the government appealed, the foundation won again in 2018 and when the government appealed again, the case was brought to the Netherlands Supreme Court, which upheld the ruling and, at the end of 2019, ordered the government to reduce emissions by at least 25%. At the end of that year, Urgenda launched a historic lawsuit, suing the Dutch government for failing to protect its citizens from climate change, and asking the court to order the government to reduce emissions between 25% and 40% by the end of 2020, compared to levels in 1990. Previously, Minnesma had avoided going through governmental channels, which were slow and cumbersome, but she realized, “We’re never going to make it if the government doesn’t change and help us change quickly,” she says. Of course, we have to be sure that the amount of alkaline lye is just enough to counterbalance the acidity, or we wind up with poor-quality fuel.Marjan Minnesma Those projects are notable alone, but around 2012, she realized they wouldn’t be enough in the face of rapidly worsening climate change. The remaining soap is removed in the wash. Adding lye converts free fatty acids to a form of soap, most of which will drain out with the glycerin. Fortunately, that acidity is neutralized by the extremely alkaline lye essential to the transesterification. On the other hand, brown grease, like we get out the back door of restaurants (either grease trap or inceptor), is somewhat acidic because it has free fatty acids, which are produced during heating and cooking. The lye acts only as a catalyst in this case, and isn’t consumed in the process. The result is an oil that burns well as a direct replacement for petroleum-based diesel fuel, with 12 to 15 percent glycerin left over at the bottom of the tank. The corrosive, alkaline lye (sodium hydroxide, although you can also use potassium hydroxide) breaks the glycerol (a heavy alcohol) off those chains and the methanol (a light alcohol) in turn takes the place of the glycerol, leaving shorter, lighter, more combustible molecules. Methanol breaks those chains of fatty acids apart. Used cooking oil (UCO) is made up of chains of fatty acids held together by glycerol molecules. There’s quite a bit of chemistry involved in transforming used cooking oil into biodiesel, in a process known as transesterification. Oils and any remaining solids from the emulsion go to a centrifuge, where the oils are separated out. We then transfer the oil to our heated settling tanks where the water and emulsion are separated. We begin our process by screening incoming material to remove contaminants and then heating the oil to remove fine particles.
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