Week 1

     As the first week of this design lab comes to a close, our group has decided to focus on the purification of biodiesel, after it is produced. We intend to focus specifically on how to wash the biodiesel in order to remove impurities such as leftover base, soap, free fatty acids (FFA), alcohol, glycerol, etc. Currently, our group wants to separate the contaminating material using gravity. Since the biodiesel and glycerol are in different phases it will be easy to simply remove the biodiesel off the top of the mixture (once it settles), or alternatively to just filter the glycerol out. Once the glycerol is gone we will focus on adding water to the mixture. This will remove impurities such as leftover alcohol, base, and soap from the biofuel to the water. The contaminated water should settle to the bottom out the container and the biofuel can be removed from the top. This leaves pure biofuel mixed with water. If we have enough time we are considering tackling from problem of drying: removing the excess water from the clean biodiesel.