mj526 Posted May 29, 2008 Report Share Posted May 29, 2008 Our group's focus question is "How much energy could be saved if we recycled for one month?" Can anyone help us with figuring out how to figure this out, or even give us links that could lead us to the right direction? We're beyond confused... Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
PsxHax Posted April 6, 2011 Report Share Posted April 6, 2011 Our group's focus question is "How much energy could be saved if we recycled for one month?"Can anyone help us with figuring out how to figure this out, or even give us links that could lead us to the right direction?We're beyond confused...Number 1, I mean do you know the main substances in the trash, if you can name at least 15 to 20, you should be done with it. Number 2, out of those compounds or mixtures of trash, can you think what kind of commercial compounds and products can be made from it and calculate the enthalpy change, which is the energy change and add them all up.Hope this helpsCheers Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
nuka Posted April 6, 2011 Report Share Posted April 6, 2011 well, it depends if you're talking about recycling:1. old broken hand-phones2. paper3. aluminium 4. glassetc. you should as a group, decide what object to focus on as your recycling thing.also, since this is group 4, you have to incorporate bio and physics into the project.. what are they going? if you know that, then that can help you choose an area to focus on so that it doesn't get overshadowed by the other sciences and still have a chemistry focus.your main question firstly is: how does chemistry come into recycling.second question: now that we've figured out how, what can we do to show the chem aspect for the project?hope that helps. Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drake Glau Posted April 6, 2011 Report Share Posted April 6, 2011 Pick one substance (preferably the major contributor) and from that you can do what Psx said and calculate the enthalpy or formation for those particular molecules. You can also try and do some research to find out how much energy is needed to form 1 bottle (or whatever you pick). If you want, you can take it one step further and based off the energy you jut figured out is needed you can easily calculate how much coal is needed to make each thing and form that you can find how much CO2 is released into the air per item. Find out roughly how many of whatever item is used per person per month and you can then calculate how much energy would be saved if we recycled all of that instead of making more and you could also find how much CO2 was stopped from entering the atmosphere.IB likes current events, like global warming (see power and climate change topic in physics for example ), so that's why I added the further steps Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
nuka Posted April 6, 2011 Report Share Posted April 6, 2011 Pick one substance (preferably the major contributor) and from that you can do what Psx said and calculate the enthalpy or formation for those particular molecules. You can also try and do some research to find out how much energy is needed to form 1 bottle (or whatever you pick). If you want, you can take it one step further and based off the energy you jut figured out is needed you can easily calculate how much coal is needed to make each thing and form that you can find how much CO2 is released into the air per item. Find out roughly how many of whatever item is used per person per month and you can then calculate how much energy would be saved if we recycled all of that instead of making more and you could also find how much CO2 was stopped from entering the atmosphere.IB likes current events, like global warming (see power and climate change topic in physics for example ), so that's why I added the further steps i think that's a good idea.. what we did for our group 4 was to see the energy produced (using a calorimeter) when burning food waste since there are so many cases of that; in hotels, at home, etc.we then magnified that to if a country were to do that, then how much energy produced by burning coal or oil would be preserved just by burning the waste which was otherwise just filling up landfills. we tried to find out how much carbon dioxide was produced when we burnt the waste, but it was difficult to find that.. if we did, then we could have compared that to the amount of carbon dioxide gas released from if coal or oil were to be burnt. Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drake Glau Posted April 7, 2011 Report Share Posted April 7, 2011 Pick one substance (preferably the major contributor) and from that you can do what Psx said and calculate the enthalpy or formation for those particular molecules. You can also try and do some research to find out how much energy is needed to form 1 bottle (or whatever you pick). If you want, you can take it one step further and based off the energy you jut figured out is needed you can easily calculate how much coal is needed to make each thing and form that you can find how much CO2 is released into the air per item. Find out roughly how many of whatever item is used per person per month and you can then calculate how much energy would be saved if we recycled all of that instead of making more and you could also find how much CO2 was stopped from entering the atmosphere.IB likes current events, like global warming (see power and climate change topic in physics for example ), so that's why I added the further steps i think that's a good idea.. what we did for our group 4 was to see the energy produced (using a calorimeter) when burning food waste since there are so many cases of that; in hotels, at home, etc.we then magnified that to if a country were to do that, then how much energy produced by burning coal or oil would be preserved just by burning the waste which was otherwise just filling up landfills. we tried to find out how much carbon dioxide was produced when we burnt the waste, but it was difficult to find that.. if we did, then we could have compared that to the amount of carbon dioxide gas released from if coal or oil were to be burnt.You can find on the internet how much energy is produced per gram of coal combusted. From that you can find the energy per mol and then you can do a conversion from mass to moles to energy through some rather basic stoichiometry.Just an example (these numbers are NOT REAL, just the method I'd use), lets say you save 20g of methane...CH4molar mass is (rounding) 16g/molCH4+O2->CO2+2H2OSo, moles=20g/16gmol-1=1.25molThe ratio for this just happens to be 1:1 (coal will not be most likely, you'll need to balance and do all that good stuff)So 1.25mol of CO2 is produced and for a gas the volume is 22.4Lmol-1 so you saved 1.25*22.4 liters of CO2 from entering the air.Now lets say you know that the enthalpy of combustion of methane is...346Jmol-1 (this isn't the right number either )You already know that you saved 1.25mol so you saved 1.25*346 joules of energy Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.