System Construction and Testing.
02 May 2008 - Second reaction completed.
01 May 2008 - First reaction completed.
31 Apr 2008 - Reactor is filtered, loaded and, water is distilled off.
30 Apr 2008 - Oil is collected from Calvin Dining Services.
30 Apr 2008 - Reactor construction is completed and ready to run.
29 Apr 2008 - Wiring of controls completed.
27 Apr 2008 - Methanol recovery system completed.
17 Apr 2008 - Piping completed.
14 Apr 2008 - The agitator is completed and mounted to the reactor.
03 Apr 2008 - Methanol recovery system construction started.
27 Mar 2008 - Heaters are mounted inside reactor vessel.
27 Mar 2008 - The agitator shaft and housing are completed.
26 Mar 2008 - The reactor and polishing column are mounted to the pallet.
18 Mar 2008 - The polishing column is completed.
28 Feb 2008 - Filtration vessel is completed.
20 Feb 2008 - The reactor vessel arrives.
1 Feb 2008 - Construction on the polishing column and filtration column are begun.
28 Jan 2008 - The main reactor vessel was ordered from a used equipment supplier.
System Design
3 Apr 2008 - Methanol recovery system design completed.
26 Mar 2008 - Agitator design completed.
19 Mar 2008 - Pump is selected and ordered.
07 Mar 2008 - System layout is finalized and pipe fittings are ordered.
06 Mar 2008 - Agitator mixing was selected instead of pump mixing becuase of cost.
13 Feb 2008 - .75" copper pipe was selected since there is some available for use in the Engineering Building Metal Shop.
08 Feb 2008 - The design for the piping layout of the system has been updated.
Jan 2008 - The system was analyzed using Finite Element Analysis to verify the need for insulation.
19 Nov 2007 - Initial designs are begining to take shape. A system schematic can be found here.
09 Oct 2007 - We have created a basic flow diagram of our process and built a basic model.
Final Report
07 May 2008 - Final report completed.
23 Apr 2008 -Draft version of the final report is completed.
27 Mar 2008 - Outline for the Final Report was completed. Work on the draft version has begun.
PPFS
10 Dec 2007 - The final version of the PPFS was completed. See the Downloads page for more details.
26 Nov 2007 - The draft version of the PPFS has been submitted to Prof. Sykes for review.
01 Nov 2007 - Outline of PPFS has been refined. Work on the draft version has begun.
Presentations
03 May 2008 - Project is displayed for senior design night and Fred presents to the guest audiance that evening.
27 Apr 2008 - Fred presents the final presentation for the senior design class.
28 Mar 2008 - Mitch presented to the CEAC review panel.
27 Mar 2008 - Adebo and Christian present to a local school.
15 Mar 2008 - Mitch and Fred present at an energy conference.
29 Feb 2008 - Adebo and Christian made the first ENGR 340 presentation.
30 Nov 2007 - Mitch made the Final Presentation for Fall Semester (second team presentation).
12 Oct 2007 - Joshua made the first team presentation.
Lab Testing
24 Nov 2007 - Lab testing has begun on an alternative reaction.
19 Nov 2007 - A successfull reaction has been completed. Future experiments will seek to duplicate this result.
8 Nov 2007 - Further experiments have been done in order to determine proper catalyst amounts. Future tests will refine results.
19 Oct 2007 - First reactions have been completed. The reaction had poor conversion (to biodiesel). Future lab experiments will test other catalyst amounts.
17 Oct 2007 - Christian and Mitch have begun testing various processes in the chemistry lab. They hope verify our process as well as determine which catalysts to use.
Grant Award
31 Oct 2007 - A revised version of the grant proposal was submitted as requested from the Michigan Energy Office.
16 Oct 2007 - We were awarded a Michigan Energy Grant for $6000. The grant proposal was submitted on 7 Sept 2007.