GRADE GROUPING: 10-12
TEAM SIZE: 2 PEOPLE.
SUBJECT AREA: ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE, CHEMISTRY, BIOLOGY.
PROJECT TYPE: EXPERIMENTAL.
PROJECT LEVEL: ADVANCED.
PROJECT FORMAT: TRADITIONAL.
PROJECT SUMMARY:This project uses elaborate techniques to purify contaminated areas in different environments after oil spills. Rather than discarding of the human hair it can be used to help cleanse the effected area, adsorb the oil, then utilized as an effective fuel derivation. The oil adsorption of potential wasted hair fibers could produce valuable solutions for our prevalent and modern society. We have investigated the ability of the human hair to adsorb a variety of potentially hazardous oils, including motor oils, bilge oils and crude oils that have the possibility of being spilled in terrestrial or aquatic environments. Current increased demand for refined crude oil products such as heating oils, lubricant oils, gasoline and jet fuels and other such related products necessitated transportation of rushing products over greater distances. When such transportation occurs in aquatic environments, any serious accident resulting in spills. As result in disastrous effects on biotic components (such as birds, aquatic mammals, and fish and aquatic micro plants in the oceans or larger water bodies). We have tried different hair colours and feel that overall black gave the best results for adsorbing the most oil. We are also using wood pellets as fuel that can help reduce global warming which has also been proven to provide the cleanest burn of any solid fuel.
Unusual weather also affects the practicality of oil spills, such as the one recently in Nova Scotia (excessive flooding) as result of broken oil tank lines and leakage of their tanks. Thousands of tonnes of human hair is cut everyday and thrown into landfills as a waste product, or discarded elsewhere with no direct benefit. Hair is not an easily degradable substance; there are instances of hair being found that is thousands of years old (i.e. Egyptian mummies). Our project looked at the possibility of finding a use for waste hair. We thought that the waste hair could be used to clean up oil spills and that the oil could be recovered or converted into pellets as a source of heating fuel.
This project organized discarded hair into groupings by colour. We measured the physical properties of the hairs, by colour group. The oil adsorption properties of different hair colours were measured. We built fuel pellets from the oil soaked hair and compared the thermal properties to wood pellets that are sold commercially.
SOFTWARE TOOLS USED: MICROSOFT EXCEL, MICROSOFT WORD, ADOBE PHOTOSHOP 6.0.
HARDWARE TOOLS USED: SCANNER, DIGITAL CAMERA.
SOURCE OF IDEA: STUDENT INTEREST.
SPECIAL SKILLS USED TO BUILD PROJECT: HTML CODE.
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