Biofuel

[deleted-405563]

Hi,
For my annual science fair, I was interested in creating biofuel. I have heard that corn and algae are very popular with scientists. However, I was wondering if it was possible to convert a weed such as grass into biofuel.
I also lack much information on this topic. Could you provide a few sites that I could read to understand the complete process?
Lastly, what could I use to test my biofuel, to see it is crude?

Thank you!
Sama

[deleted-370050]

Hi Sama_Setty,

This is a fascinating project idea! Making biofuels from weeds is a great idea, as they require comparatively less water, pesticides, and herbicides when grown than for instance the biofuel corn. This means that weeds could be more environmentally friendly biofuel than others. Biofuels either yield ethanol or biodiesel. To answer your question, grass can be a biofuel as ethanol can be extracted from grass; other plants that can produce ethanol include sugar cane, bagasse, miscanthus, sugar beet, sorghum, grain, switchgrass, barley, hemp, kenaf, potatoes, sweet potatoes, cassava, sunflower, fruit, molasses, corn, stover, grain, wheat, straw, cotton. Since there are so many plants that could serve as biofuels, perhaps you could perform additional research to try to find the plant that would be the most eco-friendly biofuel. This could be especially interesting seeing as biofuels harm the environment through their large land use, fertilizer use and water use, in addition to how biofuels from edible plants such as corn increase food prices. As an overview of how to actually produce a biofuel, the production of ethanol involves the fermentation of plants, in which bacteria digest the plant under anaerobic conditions. The production of biodiesel involves the breakdown of fats with the presence of methane. There are several projects on Science Buddies that explain how to make biofuels from plants, you may want to look at: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... ml#summary
https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... p030.shtml
https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... p038.shtml

Hope this helped and don’t hesitate to ask if you have anymore questions!

~Catherine M.

[deleted-405563]

Dear Catherine M.,
Thank you for your advice! I have been researching on the internet, and I believe that it is possible to extract biofuel from any type of oil. This oil can be extracted from plants, especially the seeds. But one idea I had was to extract oil from mushrooms, and then combine this oil with lye and methanol to produce biofuel. Would this be possible?
And if it is possible, is there a way to extract oil from mushrooms without a press or centrifuge machine? I would like to keep the costs of the project below $50.

Thank you so much for your help
Sama S.

[deleted-370050]

Hi Sama_Setty,

Sorry for the delay in the reply! It sounds like you are trying to make a biodiesel, which requires an organic oil, catalyst and an alcohol, so the oil from the mushroom, lye and methanol should work as ingredients. NaOH and KOH are also commonly used alkaline catalysts used in biodiesel production. Converting the oil to biodiesel is called Transesterification. This website gives a good overview of the process: http://www.esru.strath.ac.uk/EandE/Web_ ... /biofuels/ what_biodiesel.htm and MIT published a very detailed and helpful report on “Making your Own Biodiesel” here: https://biology.mit.edu/sites/default/f ... diesel.pdf This process seems quite technical and advanced, but is definitely doable. However, it may not work with a tight budget or limited time. Perhaps you should look into making biofuels from household waste; the main method is using anaerobic digestion of the waste to produce ethanol. This fits in perfectly with the environmentally friendly aspect of your project! Also, there are many biofuel kits online.

Since you were interested in making an environmentally friendly biofuel from mushrooms, I thought that you may find this research interesting: Myceliophthora thermophila and Thielavia terrestris are two types of heat resistant mushrooms, with enzymes that researchers believe would be much more efficient at breaking down cellulosic biomass than other cellulose degraders. Ultimately, this means that these mushrooms’ enzymes could speed up the production of environmentally friendly biofuels (those made from non food sources and derived from cellulosic biomass). The use of enzymes to speed up biofuel production is another way you could extend your experiment and make it even more interesting! http://www.ethanolproducer.com/articles ... .1976.html.

Good luck and let me know if you have more questions!
Catherine M.