Week 8

This week we were ready to restart our experiment; this time being sure to be more careful, and taking lots of measurements of everything that is relevant (temperature, rpms, weight, volume, etc.) We started by using some new biodiesel we had prepared last week, and putting it into a separation funnel so that we could remove the glycerin. Once the glycerin was removed we air washed all the biodiesel in order to remove some of the methanol. This is because biodiesel with methanol requires much more Magnesol to clean compared to biodiesel where the methanol has been removed. We weighed all the fuel we had before and after so that we knew how much methanol we removed. After this we set up three beakers with an equal amount of biofuel and randomly choose one to be used for water washing, one for Magnesol washing, and one for water-Magnesol washing. We only had enough time to preform one wash this week, so we washed the Magnesol sample. We began by heating the sample of oil up to 60°C and then we added some Magnesol equal to 2% of the sample's weight. The fuel was then mixed at 600 rpm for five minutes. After five minutes the mixture was placed into a centrifuge where it was spun for five more minutes at 2x gravity. After this the Magnesol and biofuel separated and the cleaned fuel was removed and placed into a new beaker and the used Magnesol was discarded.