VICTORY!(:

       Today everyone in Miss.Rioux's class went to the front of the school ,which is where the school parking lot is, and we were going to see if the bus would really run on the fuel that was created by all the classes. First the people that worked for Mr.Ham removed all the oil that was in the bus. Next two students got to pour in some of the biodiesel into the gas tank. Then a man got into the bus and cranked that bus and got it to start running! All of our hard work really paid off. It was too bad that we could not see the bus drive around because of we had a school lock down. But, the good news was that later Miss.rioux recieved an email from Mr.Ham and he told her that the bus made it all the way to Alpharetta without any problems and that the oil smelt like french fries. We were all happy and excited that we all got a bus to run on biodiesel that was created from our schools french fry oil. So after the schools lock down was over, we all stayed in Miss.Rioux's room and celebrated with an ice cream party!

Today In Class (May 17, 2011)

      Today in class our teacher ,Miss.Rioux, told our class that she did not have enough sodium hydroxide for everyone. So instead everyone split into groups and started getting ready for class tomorrow. Our group got all the bottles from our class period and filled it with 1 liter of useable vegetable oil. The other group got on the computers and tried to look up a place where we could dump the sludge (the glycrin and animal fat). Two students in that group found a place at Georgia Tech and tried to call. When they first tried to call them, the person who worked at Georgia Tech hung up on them. We thought she hung up because she probably thought we were just messing around and prank calling random numbers. They called again and she ended up hanging up again. The third time we called I think they used a different phone to call. They did not give us much information so our teacher told us that she would email that company. In the fuel we noticed that when we left the fuel in the beakers, the top of the fuel had a transparent looking cover on the top. We are not sure why this happened, but it might have happened because there is not there was no covering on the top of the beaker so the air could have made the top part of the fuel dry up. I think we are getting close because before we started making the fuel we watched a video tutorial on how to make the biodiesel, and we followed all the measurements and the directions. We should test to see if the fuel will work by maybe using an old junk car and fill the gas tank with the oil we have made.
  

Seperating the Oil

            Today in class we seperated the biodiesel from the animal fat, small particles, and the glycrin. We had to pair up with partners to pour all the glycrin into a sludge bucket. People lost much of their fuel because once all the glycrin fell out, we were not fast enough to put the caps back on our bottles, so the fuel started pouring out into the sludge bucket. Then we poured the oil slowly into a beaker to keep the particles from getting into the biodiesel. Some of the beakers had small particles in them, so we had to let the beaker sit over night to let the animal fat settle down at the bottom. Next we combined all the clean, useable fuel into clean bottles, and we filled  two, two liter bottles. Starting tomorrow we are going to make more biodiesel because we lost much of the oil while trying to get the glycrin out.

Making Biodiesel with Vegetable Oil

        Today in class we were going to start making the biodiesel out of 1 liter of vegetable oil (the one we filtered), 250 milliliters of methanol, and 12 grams of sodium hydroxide. We were to wear a long sleeves shirt, close toed shoes, and long pants or jeans because we were using dangerous chemicals and we would not want to get it on our skin. First we put 250 milliliters of methanol into a glass jar and closed them very tightly. Next some students in our class measured 1 liter of vegetable oil into all of our 2 liter soda bottles. Then some other students measured 12 grams of sodium hydroxide and put them into petri dishes. After measuring everything, everyone got a jar of methanol and a petri dish with sodium hydroxide. We opened the jars and poured the sodium hydroxide inside the jar. We had to shake the jar vigorously for about 5 to 6 minutes. The sodium hydroxide increased the temperature of the methanol causing the jar to be hot. After the sodium hydroxide dissolved, we got our bottles filled with vegetable oil, combined the oil and methanol, and shook it back and forth 6 times. Finally we got small beakers and placed the bottles upside down inside the beakers. I learned that the more sodium hydroxide that dissolves into methanol, causes the methanol to increase in temperature. I thought that this was a fun and neat experiment and I also think making our own biodiesel is helping us plan for the future.

How does a diesel engine work?

       The Diagram of a Diesel Engine
E - Exhaust Camshaft
S - Spark Plug
I - Intake Camshaft
V- Valves
P - Piston
R - Connecting Rod
C - Crankshaft
W - Water jacket for coolant flow





         A diesel engine converts chemical energy into mechanical energy more than a regular gas engine. The diesel engine works first by sucking air into the cylinder. The air is then squeezed together when the piston is moving. Then fuel is put in just before the piston reaches the top of the cylinder. When put together, it raises the temperature of the air. This causes the fuel to combust. Last, the waste gases are forced out of the cylinder and into the exhaust system. There are four strokes in this process: Stroke 1- Induction, Stroke 2- Compression, Stroke 3- Ignition, and Stroke 4- Exhaust.

Filtering Vegetable Oil: Day 2

       Today in class we could not heat the oil on hot plates because too much electricity was being used in Miss Rioux's room and the breakers kept switching off. So we decided to pump some oil out of the barrel, fill two buckets, and filter the oil twice instead of once. When we filtered the oil a second time we noticed there were still particles in the oil, so it was a good idea for the class to filter it twice instead of once. While the the boys in our class were filling the second bucket of oil, the pump soon became clogged. They took the pump off and checked to see if it really was clogged. I am not exactly sure what happened, but I think someone pumped the pumper when they were checking to see if it was clogged, but the end of the pump was facing one of the students and the vegetable oil splattered all over the student and the floor. We had a hard time trying to remove the oil off the floor so no one would slip and fall and injure themselves.

Filtering Vegetable Oil: Day 1

      Today in class we filtered vegetable oil. First we put a strainer over the bucket, but we left a space in the strainer to have a place where the particles can sit. Next we folded cheese cloth in half so there would be two layers of cloth instead of one. Then we duct taped the cheese cloth onto the bucket to keep it from falling off the bucket. After that we started taking beakers and pouring the oil into our filter. Once we started pouring more and more oil into the filter, we realized that the two layers of  cheese cloth was not doing anything to filter the vegetable oil. So we took the layers of cheese cloth off. The strainer was doing the work of filtering the oil, but the more oil we poured into the strainer the more it would get clogged by the small particles. What tried to do was get a student to hold the strainer in a different direction so the oil would filter through a different part of the strainer. When we were done filtering the oil we did not have time to filter it a second time or heat the oil on the hot plates. Tomorrow I think we should not use cheese cloth because we it didnt help filter anything.