We Moved The Bus!

After a lot of work on the diesel we finally finished and made the bus run. although it was fun I'm glad the project is finally over and i can stop posting blogs. I'm so glad the bus ran because otherwise we all would have failed. Today was a great day.

5th day

Today we finished the gas by pouring it into beakers very carefully. We had to be careful because there was a little bit of sludge in the bottom of the bottle and we didn't want it to be in the fuel. After that we poured one more cleaned oil into the bottles. we then measured the methanol and sodium hydroxide like we did before. Finally we poured the mixture into the bottles and inverted them 6 times and left them to sit over night.

4th day

today we squeezed the glycerine out of the bottles. we had to have two people to do it. one person had to squeeze the stuff out of the bottle and the other person had to hold their hand under the bottle so that we would not lose the oil. we then let the bottles sit over night again.

3rd day of biodiesle experiment.

what happened today in class is we first measured the one liter of oil into each two liter bottle. After that we measured 12 grams of sodium hydroxide into each 250 ml of methanol and then we shook it. After that we put it into the bottles of oil and inverted it 6 times. then we let it sit over night.

In a diesel engine firs the gasoline is put into the piston chamber. Next it is ignited by the spark plug which causes the gas to rapidly expand causing the piston to  move downward.  The piston moving downward causes the crankshaft to turn which then causes the wheels to turn.

Second day of cleaning

Today was the second day and it went a lot better. once again one group filtered oil and one group heated the oil.  However today we use pots to heat the oil instead of beakers and we heated the oil all at once. Today was a productive day.

First day of oil cleaning

Today was the first day of cleaning the oil and it went pretty well. First one group of the class filtered the oil through a pint strainer and after that the other half of the class heated it ti remove the water. I think that one thing we need to change is to heat the oil sooner so that we can get it to a higher temperature before time runs out in class. We also need a better way to carry the beakers of hot oil so that we don't drop them. Over all I think it was a productive and successful day.