Producing a Paper Experiment with Catalysts and Biodiesels

That's a difficult problem. The statement (hypothesis) must be very specific: "Using sulfuric acid, sodium hydroxide, or potassium hydroxide has no effect on the production of biodiesel." You can figure out experimental design. Obviously, you are going to run three reactions with the only difference being the catalyst used.

There are a number of ways to monitor the reaction. I don't know what the industry uses, but you might use acid value, in-process IR, or gas chromatography. You can actually get an IR probe which enables you to monitor the reaction in real time. Look in your text book for the preferred way to monitor this reaction.

Hope this gets you a start at least.

 1. Make biodiesel using a constant volume (mL) and concentration (mol/L) of the 3 different catalysts: Variables: CONTROLLED: RESPONDING: types of catalysts amount of biodiesel produced Data Collected The data consists of the observations recorded on the amount of time it takes to produce the biodiesel after adding in the catalyst. This data will be used to show whether a different catalyst will cause a difference in the production of biodiesel or not. A catalyst is meant to speed up the reaction, which is shown in the experimental control. If the different catalysts produce biodiesel differently from that in the experimental control, the hypothesis that changing the catalyst has no effect on the production of biodiesel is proven wrong. amount of catalyst used temperature the reaction occurs in environment reaction occurs in Procedure sodium hydroxide OR potassium hydroxide
sodium methoxide
hydrochloric acid. 2. When these reactions occur: record the amount of time it takes to produce the biodiesel after adding in the catalyst The variables will be controlled by: making the reactions occur in the same place (keeping a constant environment)
keeping a constant temperature throughout the reaction; in turn keeping heat as a controlled variable
measuring the same amount of catalyst before adding it into the reaction 3. Check to see if any of the catalysts have affected any of the equipment negatively. Experimental Control The experimental control for this investigation will be using sodium/potassium hydroxide as a catalyst to produce biodiesel. We will then compare the different catalysts to this experimental control. To see whether the different catalysts cause a difference in the production of biodiesel or not.