[dazza95]

A couple of questions regarding the fermentation and distilling of molasses,

What is the effect of yeast on the fermentation process? Would varying the amount of yeast effect the amount of ethanol produced or purity of it.
What is the best ratio of molasses:yeast is this worth investigating?
Does temperature effect this process too?
What role does the added water play on the fermenting process?

Thankyou

[billnotgatez]

This is from the forum rules

4. Please show that you've at least attempted the problem. We don't mind helping you solve problems but we are ethically opposed to doing homework for you. Violators will have their topic deleted or locked, and subject to banning.

Can you tell us some of your thoughts about your questions?
Have you read about fermentation?

Is this for a experiment you are designing for a project in class?
If it is have you seen something like this http://sciencefairproject.virtualave.net/scientific_method.htm

Below I have separated your questions and have some thoughts in italics - give us some of your thoughts and we will add more

What is the effect of yeast on the fermentation process?
       what is/are yeast?

Would varying the amount of yeast effect the amount of ethanol produced or purity of it.
          

What is the best ratio of molasses:yeast is this worth investigating?


Does temperature effect this process too?
          
      
What role does the added water play on the fermenting process?
         does molasses have water in it from the start?

[dazza95]

It was found that,
The higher the concentration of water in the fermentation process, the more pure the ethanol produced is, however the less the yield is.

Yeast is the machine that converts the sugar into ethanol. it effects how fast the fermentation goes.Yeast will go to sleep when it gets too cold and either just shut down or die if it gets too hot.

[billnotgatez]

I am curious
When you compute the yield do you use the total volume?
How did you define purity?


From a dictionary

yeast
 noun
 any of various small, single-celled fungi of the phylum Ascomycota that reproduce by fission or budding, the daughter cells often remaining attached, and that are capable of fermenting carbohydrates into alcohol and carbon dioxide.

[dazza95]

The yield was calculated as the mass produce. % of ethanol divide 100 multiplied by the mass of the ethanol produced,
Purity is the percentage of ethanol produced. So how pure the ethanol is.

[billnotgatez]

Thank you for responding
I am going to ponder what you did to understand

[Arkcon]

I have to tell you darza:, you have asked a very complicated, multi-part question.  It will be a lot of work for us to answer all parts.  And our forum rules still apply, you have to do most of the work.

It was found that, The higher the concentration of water in the fermentation process, the more pure the ethanol produced is, however the less the yield is.

I would like to know how you found this out.  Can you support this statement in some way?

Yeast is the machine that converts the sugar into ethanol.

No, it is not.  That might be a useful model for this particular case, but you should describe it as a model or an analogy, if you mean it that way.  That would be more typing for you, but it makes your answers more correct. 

it effects how fast the fermentation goes.

That is, likewise, not correct.  Well, somewhat correct, but only pertinent for some situations.  You should write complete thoughts, if you're going to be so abstract.

Yeast will go to sleep when it gets too cold and either just shut down or die if it gets too hot.

This is correct.  But not pertinent, did you not notice?  You mention you need temperature information, but you had this information, couldn't you have left this part out and done it your self?  Or maybe ask it later on this forum, as a separate question.

Your questions are very broad, and diverse.  You appear to have started a large project, but your questions are all over the place.  Could this be for a project styled after UK O-levels or A-levels?  If its something like that, you're expected to write up the large project yourself, and you'll have to be coherent in pulling the diverse concepts together.

We've worked with students on very complicated problems before.  And if they don't work with us to keep the questions and answer straight, things go pear-shaped rapidly.  This is an example of one such thread:  http://www.chemicalforums.com/index.php?topic=24068.0

[billnotgatez]

@dazza95
When do you have to finish this project?

The yield was calculated as the mass produce. % of ethanol divide 100 multiplied by the mass of the ethanol produced,
Purity is the percentage of ethanol produced. So how pure the ethanol is.

How did you
 measure the
 mass produced
 % of ethanol
when you did the experiment?

[dazza95]

Well, this is a yr 12 high school project where we do some experiments and then investigate them and write a report. Its not due until a couple of weeks into April

@Billnotgatez
The mass produced was measured by weighing the ethanol prodcued. The density was then calculated and we placed our results on a density vs %ethanol graph that we made prior to these experiments.

@Arkcon
Ok, this is an overview of the experiments that we conducted.
we set up fermentations varying the amount of water we put in, the different fermentation are: 500ml, 400ml, 300ml, 250ml, 200ml, 150ml, 100ml, of water with 85g of honey and 5g of yeast.
From this we recored the mass of ethanol produced, (to work out the density) and then placed it on a density vs % of ethanol curve to find out the % of ethanol we produced.

I have attached 2 graphs,
the first one is % of ethanol produced against the amount of water in the fermentation, and the second is the amount of water against the mass of ethanol produced,
It can be seen that the higher the water in the fermentation, the less ethanol that was produced however the more pure the ethanol is.

Thanks for the help

[Arkcon]

OK.  Good work on these charts.  I don't really understand the purity calculation, but I don't have to:  this is just the method your lab exercise is using.  You have good graphs of your observations, and you can draw conclusions from them.  You ask about temperature, but I don't see a graph of those observations.  If you have one, then you can draw conclusions, if you don't then you can't.  If you've read somewhere about temperature effects, you may add them to the conclusions, but you can only say how the might have effected your observations, not how they did.

[billnotgatez]

I am curious
how did you measure the weight of the ethanol?

[dazza95]

@Arkcon
Ok, Thanks.
So is there a chemical explanation to what is happening in the graphs? Or just make conclusions on what the trend is doing and with the observations try to predict what is happening?

@Billnotgatez
Im not sure if this is what you meant, but we used scaled and took the weight from that.

[Arkcon]

Yes, there is an explanation, but we'll have to see if you can find an explanation for it on your own, based on the info you have.  You have an interesting fact, too low a temperature and yeast "go to sleep", but too high a temp and they "slow down"  what would that look like, on a chart?  What does that tell you about temperature extremes, compared to other extremes?  Can you match that to some similarities in your procedure?

[billnotgatez]

@dazza95

Well, this is a yr 12 high school project where we do some experiments and then investigate them and write a report. Its not due until a couple of weeks into April

Was this a project where you were given the procedures in a handout and you are to conduct those procedures and analyze the results.

[dazza95]

@Arkon,
Ok ill get back to you with some findings!, Thanks!

@Billnotgatez
No we were given the broad topic of ethanol, and then we come up with what experiments we want to do and analysis the results and write a report etc.