Biodiesel

This unit was more of a real world experience kind of thing and along the way through our research and projects I think we learned a lot.

Here are some links that I used to learn about Biodiesel:
http://www.americasadvancedbiofuel.com/ (this is the link for the actual biodiesel company)

http://www.afdc.energy.gov/fuels/biodiesel.html

http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/biodiesel.shtml this link analyzes biodiesel as a fuel source

Here are some videos about biodiesel:
Mythbusters Biodiesel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLmF4IA2mfI

Apparently there's a whole magazine about biodiesel

Boat Races

The boat races were really fun and interesting. I think it was cool and rewarding to see the biodiesel that we made actually power something. It kind of showed us that biodiesel is a very real energy source option and showed us how easy it could be to switch to using it. The race also made it more competitive and exciting to try to make the best possible boat design. The extra credit opportunity also motivated us haha. We had a lot of difficulties with ours because our first model only went for a little while and kept getting stuck. Then, our engine had a hole in it. However, we got a different engine and made a different boat model and it finally worked.

Making of Biodiesel

Making the biodiesel itself wasn't as difficult as some of our other labs. The process of transesterification was quite simple really. We started with the waste oil (from Chick-Fil-A) and added a base of KOH. Then we heated and stirred the solution so the reaction would occur. The reaction yielded biodiesel (methyl esters) and glycerol. We will be testing the purity of the biodiesel and then using the biodiesel that we created to race putt putt boats.

Bio-diesel Video

I already really like this unit! Making the video was really fun because it was a creative project that we had to understand the information to do. Our video featured a cat and hedgehog (animals courtesy of Haley Cundiff) and the cat convinced the hedgehog to convert to biodiesel as a fuel source. Filming the animals was hard because they didn't want to do what we wanted them to do, but it was still fun. Editing the video was probably the worst part because we had to pick certain parts of the video where the animals were cooperating and then we had to voice over to make it seem like it was the animals talking (even though it didn't look like the animals were talking).

Here's the link to our video