Biodiesel Boat Race

After spending an entire day constructing our boats for the lab, we finally raced them today! Our boat finished but was not the fastest in the class. Speed depended on the composition of your boat and the quality of your biodiesel. The purer it is, the hotter it will burn which also makes the boat go faster. Unfortunately, the biodiesel of some groups eroded through the cups and spilled so they won't be using their own products. In the pictures below, you can see that our boats were very small as we only raced them in a rain gutter.

Biodiesel Day 2

Today we separated the biodiesel in our lab from the other useless liquids in our blend. We did this by letting it sit for a day for the solution to naturally separate first. Then we pipetted out the pure biodiesel that can be burnt. As you can see from the pictures below. we tested the fuel and it worked great!

Biodiesel Lab

Today we started the first step in our main lab of this biodiesel unit! We created a mixture of biodiesel that will be used to power a put-put boat in a race. By placing a combination of used fryer oil and potassium hydroxide in a hot water bath, we produced a blend that will have to be separated later for pure biodiesel.

Fryer oil

Hot water bath

Finished solution