Energy transfer project
Intro:
For this project we were assigned the task to demonstrate not only some understandings of chemistry we have learned throughout the year but also demonstrate our creativeness and engineering principles to create ways to transfer energy to different forms whilst including chemistry in some regards.
Design:
First: our original design was always to create some form of a potato cannon. We initially also wanted to make it more complicated and use our love of bikes to attempt to spin the wheels of a bicycle to create electricity, which would then be used to power a sparker in our potato cannon however as time progressed on we found this would be too difficult and time consuming as our bike wasnt working and time was running out.
So to begin construction for our potato cannon we created a simple blueprint and thought of the three main componenets we would need for our device to work. first was a chamber to in-capsule the projectile and be air tight to prevent the gas from escaping. second would be to create a form of biofuel which could be igniting allowing our projectile to fire. and lastly we needed spark or some form of igniting the gasses inside the chamber.
Construction:
To create Bio fuel was a difficult process that we originally started with potatoes. Boil potatoes and mash them
Bring up heat and add amylase enzyme bring up to 140 degrees for and hour
Converts starches to simple sugars
Filter out liquid and into fermentation chamber
add yeast and let rest for a week long period
Make sure container has a one way valve which lets out carbon dioxide from container
Distill liquid: create a system in which gas from container can be captured and cooled back to a liquid
Next heat up temperature of your liquid to 180 degrees Fahrenheit which will only boil the ethanol and not water, once ethanol is all boiled from the liquid it will be evaporated and condensed back into another container and finally resulting in pure ethanol being condensed.
Next we needed to create our PVC chamber which would house our combustion reaction and send the projectile flying. this was constructed over a number of days and had have pvc concrete on all the fixings to keep it air tight except for the exit hole and where we put in the sparker.
For the final stage of our project we switched between a sparker and a lighter to be used to ignite our ethanol this witched back and firth due to struggles with both however in the end our project was completed and data was able to be gathered using a variety of projectiles and different amounts of squirts of ethanol put into the chamber.
Chemical equation of combustion
C2H5OH + 3O2 + heat → 2CO2 + 3H2O
Energy transfers:
In the end we were able to complete the combustion reaction and show a complete transfer of energy from.
Mechanical--> electrical--> thermal--> mechanical energy.
it started with mechanical energy by having the person push the button on the sparker
next was electrical energy as the sparker sparked using electrical energy from the battery.
next was thermal as the sparker ignited creating fire which then pushed all the gasses and had energy in the form of hot air
and lastly was mechanical energy as the projectile was launched into motion.
Energy loss:
Some forms of energy lost however was thermal energy as there was a decent amount of friction between the projectile and the tubing in which it was launched. There was also energy lost to sound energy as the combustion reaction made a very loud noise and lastly there was energy loss to light energy due to the fire created from the combustion reaction.
Proof of efficacy:
The project worked as you can see by the data we gather from the left and the only outlier being the second version of our design which was in much bigger in size but we still created to demonstrate our understanding and wanting to push our design as far as possible.
Reflection:
Reflecting on this project I think this was close to one of the most fun ones we had. The team worked extremely well with one another regardless of some hick-ups. Due to this I think I worked extremely well at critical thinking and being able to help come up with ideas and engineer new ways of thinking for our project. I was also able to demonstrate forms of cultural competence through goal setting the group and helping to keep everyone motivated throughout the project and make our rather big group feel more encouraged to help and everyone had a place.
I could still use some work on conscientious learner, as I didn't always say my ideas to the group and I could've attempted to step up more and take a leadership role in the tasks at hand. secondly I could use work on is communication as I often lacked to help communicate over the weekends and should've put in more time to ensure we had supplies or communicated with the rest of the team to bring supplies so we could be ready faster and prepared to go when class started.