Cow Poop Lab Report

Introduction:
The purpose of our experiment is to determine the flow rates of the cow manure so we
can more accurately project the amount of methane we will be producing when we go full scale
with our project. We will also test the flow of rates 100% cow fecal matter and 50% fecal matter
and 50% food. With the information, we are going to gather we can implement aspects of the
experiment into our design.

Experiment #1
For this experiment, we will be taking different kinds of food mixed with different sample
sizes of cow fecal/excrement experiments. We decided to use two 5 gallon buckets with an
airtight cover to capture the methane. We punctured a hole into the bucket and tubed it through
to a balloon that can capture methane gas. We have to use silver mylar balloons to collect the
methane because normal rubber balloons will allow the methane to escape through the
membrane. The main goal for this experiment is to compare the amount of methane produced in
the buckets. Our first bucket is our control; it only contains the cow manure and will allow us to
compare the amount of methane produced normally, to another bucket with a mix of both
manure and high sugar content foods. We used high sugar content foods to feed bacteria inside
the buckets that digest the cow manure. The bacteria use the sugar to reproduce and grow
exponentially. The food bucket has foods such as powdered donuts, oranges, pears, apples,
and bread, as well as cow manure. The contents inside the bucket will hopefully help us
produce an increased amount of methane gas at a much faster than normal rate. With the
known flow rates we will be able to fully design or full-scale project and have the known about of
methane gas that will be produced.

Error analysis:

Through 2 weeks we have seen little to no methane collection. Even though we have no
methane to show we know that there is some gas being created. During the 2 days before we
made out collection tanks, we had a bubble of gas push the top of the bucket up. This
observation gives us reasonable doubt that the buckets aren’t creating any gas. This being said
there is probably an error on our behalf causing our balloons not to fill up. There are a number
of ways that we could have messed up. The most obvious being that our seals for the balloons
aren’t tight. Another could be that we didn’t go big scale and the gas just isn’t strong enough to
push up into the balloon without some back pressure
Experiment #2:

For round two of our data collecting, we will need to do a larger scale of our project. We
have ordered two 14 gallon containers where we will store our cow manure. The added cow
manure will speed up the reaction process creating methane for us to collect. With the
increased temperature of the seasons, our methane collection will increase. This is due to
reaction kinetics. With an increased temperature the reacting molecules will move faster
creating higher odds of them colliding with enough force and correct orientation. With correct
orientation and enough force, the reaction can commence.
We will also need to create tighter seals on our buckets. Here we will use more glue and
duct tape to create an airtight seal.
With the new increased rate of reaction and more methane gas being created we will
finally fully be able to understand the flow rates and rate of creation of the methane gas. With
the collected methane gas we will be able to run another experiment to find the best way to
purify the gas. We have a mentor, Chris Finton at the Central Marin Sanitation District, that will
give us gas testing kits so we can test how pure our gas is. Once all the knowledge of flow rates
and purification is known we will be able to design a full-scale project of our Biogas DIgester
and create a 3D model of it will correct measurements.
Day 1:
Day 2
Check after school showed very little if any growth in the balloon
Day 3
Morning check showed no sign of growth possible air pockets but not much
Day 4
Still no sign of gas
After two weeks:
No collect of gas has occurred and we are officially scrapping this experiment and going to a
larger scale.