It's been a while...

Lots to update since last time. We opened up the scope of our project to biofuels in general instead of just sugarcane (though this remained as one of the three specific fuels we looked at along with corn and algae). We used a number of books and a few internet sources for our research. On Wednesday and Thursday (the 2nd and 3rd of December) we compiled all our information and put the board together. This took quite a bit of organization as our information didn't always fit together under easily under common categories. However, now that it's all finished I'm pleasantly surprised at how it turned out. On Friday we presented our board to the class. Monday we get to see everybody else's boards! This includes the projects of students from all other classes too: physics, chemistry, and environmental systems. It looks like this may be the last post unless there is some other major update to our project :(. That being the case, I'd like to say how much I enjoyed doing this project. I went through a lot of twists and turns to get here, but I learned a ton and was very surprised to find how useful algae is in this field. It was unnerving to see that corn-based ethanol is so widely used in the United States, yet does not confer nearly as many benefits as some of the other fuels. Only time will tell what road the future of renewable energy takes.

Research

Today I went to the Denver Public Library and got three books on renewable energy. One of them had a specific lean towards Brazilian policies and use of ethanol as a renewable. I will look over these for biological and environmental information on our topic.

And the horses are off...

We met to begin our research today. The topic has been refined from biofuels in general down to sugarcane use in Brazil. We found lots of information on the biological processes involved in obtaining remaining energy from dead plant cells, but still need to find out more info about the environmental impacts.

Mo Progress

We met for three hours wednesday to work on our project. We have ordered the wicks that we will be using as well as a thermometer to measure the change in temperature which thus corresponds to the maximum power output of the fuels. We will test vegetable oil and our version of biofuel. We decided against doing waste vegetabl oil (i.e. after it had been used to cook). We will have to wait for materials to arive, but should have the experiment conducted in a couple of weeks. So long for now.

New Plan

I will now be working in a new group with Sarah, Ido, and Amaya. We will be testing the energy efficiency between biofuel and other fuels. Specifically we will test biodeisel and vegetable oil. Sounds fun. We will need a kerosene lamp for this experiment.

Blog #1

We finally got the topic chosen for our G4. We will test the energy content of plants. It's still pretty open at this point, but were hoping to burn them! Then we can see how much they heat water up. This actually sounds pretty useful if I ever end up lost in the wild. Peace.