ASSIGNMENTS
Principles and Practices
The assignments for this week were:
- Plan and sketch a potential final project.
Final Project:
Around the world 1.5 billion people live without
electricity and in my country, Brazil, we face constant power outages
due to low power capacity and rain. With billions of people around the
world with no electricity and with my country in mind, my project will
be geared towards improving these conditions.
The concept of my project is to build a free energy
generator that is programmed to start producing energy to run a
refrigerator as soon as it detects the main power is off. While many
free energy generators can be expensive I will build a generator that
will be lower in cost, more accessible and most importantly just as or
more efficient then the higher priced generators. My concept will also
be able to be applied to not just homes but, to hospitals, clinics,
schools, and office buildings as well.
Project of essential oils separator less dense than water:
I decided to change my project idea to something
that has to do with my degree. I was very confused at first, so I
brainstormed with my grandfather who is a chemist, and he told me to
work on improving a system of essential oil extraction. In the
laboratory, we are often working with steam distillation (a method for
distilling compounds which are heat-sensitive). I have decided to use
this method to separate the essential oils. By the end of the process,
we will be able to separate the oil from the water. Usually we do it by
using micropipettes (in the image below) once the oil floats to the top
and the water sinks to the
 
Here is one video about how Steam Distillation works: https://youtu.be/7g4e3dhtgjI
Below is a picture of one example of steam distillation proces
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In steam distillation, the boiling flash is infused with steam, which
carries the oil’s vapor into the distilling head and then into the
condenser, where the oil and water co-condense. As an alternative,
steam is generated in situ in the distilling pot. By the end of the
process a mixture of water and oil will end up in the receiving flask.
The process to separate the oil from the water is difficult, we usually
use micropipettes to separate the oil as I previously stated. My
project on the other hand will be, to make a conic vassal, that will be
a substitute for the receiving flask with no more than 20cm. It will
have one entrance for the distilling on the bottom, and two exits, one
for the water and the other one for the oil, on the top. As you can see
in the picture:
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