EWB, BMC; next meeting Monday 7pm
Matt Ball
Here's a recap of the biomass charcoal team's most recent exploits and a
plan for our work next week:
After air-drying the briquettes for a week, we attempted to take
calorimetry data. We were unsuccessful in this due to difficulties
encountered in igniting the briquettes. Embers formed on charcoal that
was still in the corn cob shape (unbound briquettes) and also in
briquettes that had been oven-dried, but the embers were slow to
spread. The D-Lab reported using paper kindling to help ignition; they
also dried their briquettes for two months before attempting to light
them. We've decided to let our briquettes dry for a similar amount of
time, so I suppose we'll return to them in mid-January, er, which I
guess really means after winter break.
Amy Smith gave a fantastic talk at the general meeting Monday and
addressed many of our questions after our presentation and during her
own (Patrick's excellent notes on her responses will be posted to the
site). She also left us with a briquette-press (one made my Jock
Brandis himself). So for our upcoming meeting we've got options: some
of us discussed making our own press prototype for briquette
production. The other option I see is creating more briquettes with the
press Amy gave us. If you'd rather do one over the other, email me.
The upcoming meeting will be *Monday* 11/19 at 7pm. We'll gather
outside of Vesic on Teer's second floor then move to the Teer basement
and into one of the labs. Let me know soon if you'd prefer an earlier
time and we'll try to work something out. Oh, and try to get outside
and enjoy the splendid weather we've suddenly found. Hope to see you
Monday!
Matt