Biofuel

Purpose:

The purpose of the biofuel lab is to learn how to properly find our own papers and research how to complete a lab in a way that wasn't just provided, it wasn't just given to us and we completed the instructions like reading a cookbook. We learned how to find and genuinely understand what you are reading, because if you don't understand it, you don't know if its right. Additionally the main technical purpose is to create and distil ethanol above a 70 proof to light up.

Materials:

- Filter

- Scale

- Weight boats

- 1000 mL Erlenmeyer flask with side arm

- 250 mL round bottom flask

- Thermometer

- Condenser

- Yeast

- Stirring rod

- Funnel

- Tape

- Parafilm

Beakers - 100 mL, 400 mL, and 1000 mL

- 100 mL graduated cylinder

- Microwave

- 25 mL round bottom flask

- Lighter

- Hot plate

- Blender

- Smaller graduated cylinder

- Corn

Procedure:

Fermentation:

Grind 250g of dried corn kernels into a fine powder using a blender or grinder
Mix the ground corn with 1 liter of water in a large beaker
Heat the mixture to 85-90°C, stirring continuously to prevent clumping
Add α-amylase enzyme 0.5g powder while stirring
Cool the mixture to 25-30°C
Sprinkle 2.5g of yeast over the mixture
Stir gently for 60 seconds to evenly distribute the yeast
Seal the vessel with a water airlock to allow CO₂ to escape while preventing contamination
Store at 25-30°C for 3-5 days
Check for bubbling as a sign of active fermentation
After fermentation, strain the mixture using cheesecloth or a fine mesh strainer to remove solids

Distiliation:

Pour the filtered liquid into a distillation flask
Heat the mixture and maintain the temperature at 78°C to boil off ethanol
Collect the ethanol vapor through the condenser into a separate collection flask
Continue collecting ethanol until the temperature rises above 82°C
Stop distillation and burn the collected ethanol on the table
Dispose of fermentation waste

Observations:

Fermentation:

Lost some corn in the blender
Lost some corn on the sides and some on the table when pouring
Took a while but I this part went well
Didn't really change much over 10 minutes
Took a while
Had to move fast after this so I might have lost a little yeast
Lost some yeast on the stir stick
We used a water air lock, so air could come out but air could not come in.
Stored at 25-30°C for 3-5 days in the fume hood, but for a part I had to transport from home to the school so that could have caused problems
It was bubbling until I had to pack up the experiment
Didn't have a cheese cloth so I did a vacuum filtration

Distiliation:

Used a funnel
The temperature was maintained with little variability in the experiment.
Had to put tin foil around the vessel because it got too hot and would evaporate the ethanol
I didn't reach this temperature because I ran out of class time
I had a great burn

Data Collection:

861A0E73-CA77-48E4-82DD-C1EF7AD04254.MP4

After a few days of getting no ethanol I decided to try a diffrent reaction I had running as a backup for situations just like this one. I was very proud of my ethanol collection because it was more than the majority of my class and burned incredibly.

Conclusion:

In this lab I utilized my understanding of biology and chemistry to research and understand a lab without doing "cookbook chemistry". I achieved this by researching for a long time before the project to make sure I both understood what each step does and why its implemented but also I looked at diffrent recipes and found one that was a median for them all and based by lab off it. I successfully found lab sheets online and I created Ethanol that burned exceptionally bright and long, along with having a lot more ethanol than I ever could have anticipated.

Reflection:

I enjoyed this lab, but I wish I had more time, I had got so much biofuel from the last half of one class, I wonder how much more I could have gotten from that bottle, considering it worked well for two other people I feel I could have gotten a lot more had I used the rest instead of lending it out because I didn't have time to do it. But all in all I enjoyed this project and thought it was a really cool process that is creating something tangible not just something that you can smell and know its the right thing I knew this was because I could see it, light it on fire, and even it was edible, (Not that I can or would do that its just cool to make something in a lab that is like, not going to make you blind or give you 8 diseases).

Lab Technique:

In this lab we used a distillation to collect the ethanol we produced from the fermentation. This was accomplished by using a condenser and two round bottom flasks to keep the system as closed as possible so the least amount of ethanol evaporates, but the contraption didn't explode because I had a piece of parafilm with a small hole in it to relive pressure.

IMG_8702.MOV

Lab Sheets:

Biofuel lab sheets.pdf

I used the pdf to the left to design my experiment. I based everything I did off of the instructions, but like I mentioned in the purpose, I learned how to do it without following step by step instructions.

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