Let’s Amass Some Gas
By Ashki Shkur and Candyce Wong
Intermediate Category (Grades 9-10)
Innovation | Environment
1. We hypothesized that if we use food waste and cow manure to create biogas, then it will produce a more eco-friendly alternative for natural gas. Using biogas is an alternative and easy way to reduce methane gas rather than using natural gas.
2. We used 1 rotten potato, 1 cluster of rotten grapes, 1 banana peel, some expired bread scraps, onion peels, used tea leaves and 10 mandarin orange peels to create a mushy paste-like mixture. We then added the mixture with the cow manure and left the mixture in a warm environment for a week to produce biogas. After 4 days we tested the gas productivity and saw that our experiment was successful, due to the gaslighting up our small stovetop.
3. We used a mini stovetop to test the productivity of the biogas. We left the mixtures to produce biogas for 3 days to see how much gas was created by comparing the fullness of the tire every day and measuring how much gas is produced by using a pressure gauge. We thought that using a tire will best show the amount of biogas being produced because you can see it visually decreasing and we can also measure it by using a pressure gauge.
4. The test results confirmed our hypothesis and suggested that when food scraps and cow manure are combined together they can produce a gas that is more eco-friendly to the environment than natural gas, which is what we currently use to power gas stovetops.
5. In conclusion, the results show that biogas from food scraps and cow manure is more sustainable than using natural gas.
