Sulphur Springs FFA student, Colten Froneberger, demonstrates the advantages of
using agricultural products in solving the Gulf Oil Spill, water seperation.

 

 

Sulphur Springs FFA Student Engineer
Solves "Oil Spill" Separation

 

by: Bobby McDonald

 

 

Fronebeger designed and built this filter system to separate the oil from water, using filters of hay,
wool, and hair, finding that hair was the best filter material.

 

"Present a problem and someone will try to fix-it!" Well, that's just what Sulphur Springs Sophomore FFA student, Colten Froneberger, has done. He will be taking his engineering and shop construction skills, as well as his public speaking finesse to Louisville, Kentucky, as he competes on the National level for awards and scholarships. Froneberger will be competing in the 2010 FFA Ag Science Engineering Competition, with a presentation and construction project that he designed to "clean-up" the Gulf Oil Spill. "Just like everyone else, I heard about the Gulf Oil Spill, in April, and I decided to use ag engineering and agricultural products to devise a way to filter the oil from the Gulf waters," allowed a shy Colten Froneberger. "After a number of experiments, I found that you can filter the water and use, hay, wool, and hair as filtering devices to extract the oil compounds from the contaminated water!"

"I'm no 'Mad Scientist,' but just used methods that we use in engineering and some basic science to devise a plan for filtering the water," continued Froneberger, as he "warmed up" to the subject. "It was fun to use the different methods and to see what would work the best, in solving the problem!"

 

 

 

 

Froneberger won the State Competition, when he competed in Corpus Christi, in July, and will now be competing at the National Convention, next week. Froneberger and his fellow Sulphur Springs FFA member, Colby Parker, will be attending the convention with Sulphur Springs Vocational Agriculture Teacher, Amber Norris. "We're looking for Colton's presentation to do well, as it is certainly timely, and addresses a current problem," related Norris. "Even with the oil leak being 'capped,' there is water in The Gulf still contaminated and affecting the oxygen levels for aquatic life."

 

A closer look at Froneberger's filtering system, as it removes the oil compounds from water.

 

Froneberger's experiment hypothesis included:

The massive ongoing oil spill from British Petroleum’s Deep Water Horizon is considered the largest off water oil spill in history.   Experts feel the spill will have a horrendous effect on the environmental habitat as well as regional aquiculture. Efforts to clean up the oil spill include skimmers, booms and the more expensive Kevin Costner’s motorized centrifuge.  This experiment applies practical principles and media in oil water separation.   Using Stokes Law, the model created will separate oil from water by allowing oil droplets to coalesce and purify the oil from water salt solution.   To test the effectiveness of this model, a filtering system created from common agricultural materials (independent variable) was used to test the purified percentage (dependant variable).  My hypothesis is if variant filters are added to an oil/water separator then, the amounts of residual oil in water will reduce significantly.  The experiment results supported my hypothesis with the oil water separator filtering 70% of the oil solution, hay filtering 91.8% of oil solution, wool filtering 99.93% of the oil solution and hair filtering 99.99% of oil solution.   This experiment proves that the oil water separator principle of design work effectively but it is more effective to have a filtration apparatus applied.

        

 

 

 

Question / Defined Problem:

 

What affect does a filtering system have on an oil/water separator?

 

 

 

Hypothesis/ Engineering Goal:

 

If variant filters are added to an oil/water separator then, the amounts of residual oil in water will reduce significantly.

 

This is the engineering diagram of Froneberger's oil filtering system, designed to
filter contaminated oil from Gulf waters.

 

"I'm confident that the project is addressing a critical and current problem," advised Colten Froneberger. "With the project I've devised a system that can use agricultural products to address world needs and meet the demands of a changing world. So, I feel that it should place well in next week's competition. But, I'll be competing against projects from all across the nation. We'll just have to wait and see what the judges think of the system!"

 

 

Best of luck to Colten, as he takes his engineering, scientific, and public speaking
skills to National Competition, next week.

 

Best of Luck,
Colten!!!

 

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