Introduction

All around the world, electricity isn’t easy to come by. People in small towns and villages rely on a form of cooking gas call biogas. This biogas can be burned and is usually found in the form of methane. People in rural areas collect methane gas from their cattle and the village heads collect it and put it into a large public methane tank. Methane is very useful and burns easily, and does not pollute the air, and is very clean. Our project is the figure out which type of feedstock works the best. Feedstock is the material that is combusted in the generator. We will have three different feedstocks; manure, manure with vegetable peelings, and manure with mashed bananas. We will then test them in three different temperatures, to determine which condition and which fuel/feedstock would be the best to create the most flammable gas in the most efficient way.

Materials

Used 18L clear plastic water bottle

• Large Mylar helium balloon

Plastic water bottle cap (with the “no-spill”

insert-see photo)

• Copper tubing (40 cm long, 6.5mm (1/4”)

inside diameter)

• T-connector for plastic tubing (barbed, 6mm or

¼” long)

• 1 cork (tapered, 23mm long)

• Clear vinyl tubing (1.5 m long, 4mm or ¼-inch

inside diameter)

• 2 barb fittings (¼” x ¼”)

• Ball valve (1/4”)

• 6-8L manure pellets (goat, sheep, llama, rabbit,

or other ruminant)

• Rubber gloves

• Large plastic funnel (can be made from a 4L

plastic milk jug with bottom removed)

• Wooden dowelling or stick (30 to 50 cm long,

2-3 cm thick)

Hypothesis and Plan

Our hypothesis is: What type of feedstock will efficiently create the most biogas?

Our experiment is: To make three biogas generators, and use three different feedstocks. They are manure, manure with mashed banana, and manure with vegetable peelings. We will test them over a course of three weeks. Each week, each feedstock will be placed in a different environment, each with different temperatures. The three conditions are room temperature, naturally cool, and artificially cooled (boiler room in the basement). This procedure will determine which feedstock and condition is the best to create the most biogas.