Ethanol from Garbage

[shifa]

(Deleted)

[donnahardy2]

Hi Shifa,

Expanding on a previous science fair project is a very good idea because it will give you a chance to answer some of the questions that you could not the first time through. Here are some possibilities for expanding your previous work.

Here is a project from the Science Buddies website that describes how to make a calorimeter. You could use this to burn your alcohol and measure the calories of heat produced.

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... p012.shtml

Here is an example of a laboratory exercise and a procedure for quantitating ethanol using a wet chemistry. You would have to check to see if you could obtain the potassium dichromate, sulfuric acid, and s-diphenylcarbazide required for the test.

http://spot.colorado.edu/~kompala/lab2.html

http://www.eng.umd.edu/~nsw/ench485/lab9e.htm

Do you know anyone who works in a laboratory? If so, ask if they have an HPLC (high pressure liquid chromatography) or a GC (gas chromatography) method available and perhaps you could visit the lab and observe the method for doing this type of analysis.

Octane is an 8-carbon chain hydrocarbon; ethanol is a 2-carbon molecule, octane rating would not apply to your sample.

You would need a large quantity of the ethanol to run an engine. Typically, lab scale experiments yield very small quantities and you would need to purify the ethanol by distillation. Please describe what you are doing to produce ethanol and I'll make some additional suggestions for this part of your experiment. Perhaps you can do something like calculate productivity for your sample, by measuring the amount of raw materials and the quantity of ethanol produced.

Since you have done this project before, I assume you are familiar with the scientific review process and that you have checked with your teacher to get preapproval for this project. Here is the information from the Science Buddies website for projects involving hazardous chemicals.

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... chem.shtml


Donna Hardy

[shifa]

(Deleted)

[donnahardy2]

Hi,

Your project sounds really great and I can understand why you want to take this project to the next level. Your protocol was excellent and it sounds like you were meticulous in your details. I’m sure the science fair judges were impressed with the results in triplicate. That’s great that you have access to an HPLC or GC method at UBC; these methods are quantitative and you can verify the balloon results. Ethanol does have a unique density, so the distillation step was useful to verify its presence. For this year’s project, building an engineering model for scaling up your process would be a great idea, and including the survey of the local landfill to project how much landfill space would be saved would also be excellent. You could also estimate how much usable energy would be produced with the trash from your city.

Another possibility would be to actually scale up the ethanol production and produce enough to power a small engine. What volume of ethanol did you obtain from the 25 ml of each waste sample? How much would you have to scale up to obtain 10 ml or 100 ml of ethanol?

The safety rules of the Science Buddies website do not allow e-mailing outside of this forum. What size is the file that you need to send?

Donna Hardy

[shifa]

(Deleted)

[donnahardy2]

Hi,

It’s always a challenge to get all of your other school work done in addition to your science fair project, but it’s good to hear from you again. I think that scaling up your operation is an excellent idea, but I think you are going to need a very small engine. You might ask all your neighbors and relatives if anyone has a broken item with an engine that you could recover. You probably want something smaller than a lawnmower. I wonder if you could find a real toy-sized engine. With an engine, you could estimate how much ethanol you would need to produce.

I am not familiar why GC analysis of ethanol, but the analysis time for ethanol on an HPLC column is usually about 25 minutes. It might be shorter depending on the length of the column you will be using. If there are other compounds in your sample you might need to run the column for up to an hour to remove any late eluting peaks. You will probably need to centrifuge the samples and filter them through a 0.45 or .22 micron filter; you will need only about 0.1 ml of each sample to inject a 10 to 20 up sample. You will need to inject standards of a known concentration before you start your samples so you can quantitate your results. If the HPLC system is all set up with a column running, it will take at least two days to run all of your samples. If you have to set everything up (hopefully with someone to train you), it will take another 2-3 days, or longer. I would recommend starting as early as possible to make sure you have time to do this part of the project. The advantage of the HPLC technique is that you would other peaks in the chromatogram like the starting sugar and intermediate organic acids. If you will be taking samples over a period of time, you will be able to see the progression of the fermentation process from sugar to ethanol.

A GC method would be faster so you might be able to get all of your samples tested within a day if the system is set up with the right column for this analysis. Here’s an article on the GC analysis of ethanol fuel samples:

http://www.chem.agilent.com/Library/app ... 9460EN.pdf

GC and HPLC system can be easily damaged by inexperienced users. Do you have someone to show you how to use the equipment? This is a fantastic opportunity for you and you will be able to learn a lot about laboratory work.

If you have any other information to share, you can upload the file on the Science Buddies website.

Donna Hardy

[shifa]

(Deleted)

[donnahardy2]

Hi,

This is really good news. If someone is available to help you and the column is ready to use, then 2.5 hours should be plenty of time. Ask questions and have everything prepared so you will be able to make good use of the time.

Good luck!


Donna Hardy

[shifa]

(Deleted)

[donnahardy2]

Hi Shifa,

I am more familiar with HPLC methods, but I think you will use your sample as it is. If you distilled your sample, it would have a different concentration of ethanol. You will need to filter your sample to remove particulates, but do ask if any other sample preparation is needed.


Donna

[shifa]

(Deleted)

[donnahardy2]

Hi,

This is a very challenging project for grade 10, and I think it is an excellent idea. Science projects with practical applications are always good. You cannot worry about the other 59 projects that will be entered, but you can focus on making your project as good as it can be. Once important factor in a science project is measuring the results, and your opportunity to use the GC instrument will allow you to obtain very accurate results. The analysis of the data will be very important. Make sure you explain the science behind your project and pay attention to the small details in presenting your results. You can read through the project guide from the Science Buddies website; the analysis and communication sections will be most useful to you now.

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... ndex.shtml

I encourage you to continue and do the best you can. Your project could definitely be a winner.

Donna Hardy

[shifa]

(Deleted)

[donnahardy2]

Hi Shifa,

Thinking of a good title for a science projects is challenging. You want something catchy that describes your project that’s not too boring. Your title idea is very creative and would certainly get attention, but I’ve never seen a science project project title with a non-standard English word in it before. You have to remember that the titles are published and that most science fair judges are traditional. However, I really like your idea, and I think you could choose a different title, and then use your idea as a a subtitle or perhaps make a cartoon of a yeast cell with a smiley face quoting your title idea. That would add a little humor to the project that would be appreciated.

If you decide that you want to start a new tradition by using a non-standard word in a science fair title, then I would recommend changing it slightly to “Forget the Bread and Gimme Garbarge.” Baker’s Yeast. Your title just does not work at all if the "gimme" is changed to "give me."

I cannot think of anything nearly as creative as your idea, but the following titles are straightforward and descriptive:

Biofuel from garbage
Ethanol from garbage.
Don't throw away the garbage

I hope this helps.

Donna Hardy

[shifa]

(Deleted)

[shifa]

(Deleted)

[donnahardy2]

Hi Shifa,

I love your title from last year. Titles with rhyming words or alliterations are always good. I’ll try to think of something to help you. Maybe something along the lines of “Getting Great Gas from Garbage” would work. Not as good as last year. I'll keep thinking.

Congratulations on learning the gas chromatography technique! I'm happy to hear that you were able to get results in the allotted time on the instrument. How much ethanol, methanol and isopropanol were in your sample? Were there any volatile organic acids present? Can you post the data? As far as I know, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, ferments glucose to ethanol and does not produce methanol or isopropanol. The tea leaves and veggie peels would have pectin, cellulose, and probably some 5 carbon sugars available to ferment. And, there were probably some other microorganisms present in your sample. Did you do anything to sterilize the samples before you added the yeast? What was the temperature of the fermentation? Did you add enzymes or acid to hydrolyze the polysaccharides to monosaccharides? How much yeast did you add to the sample? The analysis of your data is a very important part of your project and it would be great if you could provide an explanation about what happened. You have obviously done lots of background reading in college-level biochemistry sources and have a good idea about the composition of your sample. If you can explain a little more about the sample composition, the conditions of your experiment, I would be happy to make additional comments.

Donna Hardy

[shifa]

(Deleted)

[shifa]

(Deleted)

[donnahardy2]

Hi Shifa,

If the Science Fair is in 4 days, then you are correct; you need to focus on writing up your results. If your project is selected for the next level of competition, then you can do more research on this topic. For the purposes of this project, you should know that when grown under anaerobic conditions, Saccharomyces cerevisiae metabolizes glucose to ethanol, carbon dioxide, and succinic acid. This organism does not produce methanol or isopropanol or methane.

http://biochemie.web.med.uni-muenchen.d ... bolism.pdf

Since you did not sterilize your sample, then the presence of the methanol and isopropanol confirms that there were also unknown microorganisms growing and using different metabolic pathways to obtain energy from your sample. There’s no evidence that you had methanogens in your sample as these are obligate anaerobes. Your explanation will have to be broad for this part of the project. Be as general as possible to explain anything that wasn't part of your experiment. The main point is the ethanol, so focus the main part of your discussion on this. It’s good that your ethanol peak was largest, so this is the most important end product in your samples.

The output from the GC detector is in microvolts. To correlate microvolts to the concentration of ethanol, you would have to know the microvolts generated by a standard with a known concentration of ethanol. Did you run a standard curve of ethanol, or had the instrument been calibrated before you ran your samples? If you don't know, then call or e-mail the person who trained you and ask. Knowing the concentration of ethanol in the samples is pretty important for your project.

Donna Hardy

[shifa]

(Deleted)

[shifa]

Hi,

I realize that this may be quite late, but a big thank you once again for your sincere advice and help as I worked on my science fair project this year. The final product was a great success! I advanced from my school fair, to the Regional science fair. There, I won a gold medal, and proceeded to the Canada-Wide Science Fair held in Charlottetown PEI in May. Along with a great experience at the national fair and meeting passionate young scientists across the country, I also won a bronze medal and a biostatistics special award.

As you may have noticed, I have taken off my posts from this forum to protect the originality of my work, as I intend to share my findings with the public later on through scientific journals. I'd like to ask you to do the same please.

Thank you for your understanding

Sincerely,
Shifa

[donnahardy2]

Hi Shifa,

Congratulations! Thanks for letting us know about your success at Canada Wide. Your project was amazing and you did a lot of work. I’m very happy that you won the bronze award and the biostatistics special statistics award. The awards were very well deserved. Good luck to you in the future.

Donna Hardy