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At the beginning, we wanted work on the consequences of ocean acidification on corals, what consequences it has on the ecosystem and what are the economics and ecologicals issues

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The objective was to extract sugar from sugar beets in order to ferment it to obtain bioethanol. For this we cut the beet into cubes and then put it in a beaker. We put them in boiling water for 15min. We pour the cooking water into an Erlenmeyer flask, we mix the cubes of beets, we pour the mixture into containers in order to centrifuge it and extract the juice in order to add it to the Erlenmeyer flask. We wait 3 weeks for the fermentation an finally, we distill it to extract bioethanol.
(We repeat the exact same thing but we boiling the water during 1 hour to compare the yield).

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Welcome

Welcome to the collaborative Padlet wall.
Here you will post any update about your scientific project. You can add text, slideshows, pictures and videos.

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Here are the guidelines for you to complete the Padlet wall.

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The objective of our project is to be able to replace fossil fuels with renewable resources.

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The objective of our project is to be able to replace fossil fuels with renewable resources.

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Experimental protocol :

purpose : Produce biodiesel from rapeseed oil and ethanol.

For processing, you must not have excess rapeseed oil because it is impossible to separate rapeseed from biodiesel.

2 balloons of 1L

2 balloon heaters

2 reflux column

2 refrigerant

2 separating funnels 500mL

500 mL test tube

100 mL test tube

Protective equipment: gown, goggles and gloves

hydrometer (density from 0.800 to 0.900)

liquid funnel

100ml rapeseed oil

25 mL of ethanol

96% sulfuric acid (to make a catalyst)

stirrer

glycerol triester + 3 ethanol → glycerol + ethyl oleate (EEC)

The experience:
Pour 600mL of rapeseed oil into the 100mL and 500mL test tubes.

Pour 150mL of ethanol into the 100mL and 50mL test tube.

Using a funnel, pour the rapeseed and ethanol into a balloon.  Then add a few drops of sulfuric acid and pumice stone.

Put the flask on the heating mantle and screw it to the reflux column as shown in the photo.

Heat for about an hour, then wait for it to cool then pour the liquid into a separatory funnel, leaving the pumice stone in the flask.

Leave the mixture to rest for at least two days.

We obtain three phases (from top to bottom):

- excess ethanol

- assumed biodiesel

Extract the glycerol.

Pour the mixture of ethanol and biodiesel into a second flask.

Then put the balloon on the balloon heater and screw it to the condenser.

In the table we see that the boiling point of ethanol is 78°C while that of biodiesel is over 200°C.

Thus using a thermometer we look at the temperature of the vapors at the top of the cooler.  When it indicates 78°C the ethanol evaporates.

After evaporation of the ethanol there are no more vapors so the thermometer goes back down in temperature.  At this time we know that there is only biodiesel left and the ethanol is collected in an Erlenmeyer flask.

Allow the biodiesel to cool and pour into a 100mL test tube.

To verify that the experiment worked, we measure its density.

Just gently insert the hydrometer into the supposed biodiesel.

We are supposed to find a value close to the theoretical value which is 0.880.

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one of the two bottles of one of the extractions

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one of the two bottles of one of the extractions

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during our protocol/experience we had meet two problems:
1. first, in the step 1 when we recovered the sugar beets, we realized that they had started to rot (therefore fermented and produced ethanol).
2. then, in the step 3, at the end of the distillation we only got water without ethanol.