1. JUNYUAN SECONDARY SCHOOL
Team Members: Wang Shi Yun , Chen Siew Ting , Chen Ji Xiang , Teo Wei Qing
Teachers in-charge: Mrs Yap-Wong Fui Yen and Mdm Chia Boh Peng
RP Advisor: Francis
Topic : Turning Fruit Peels into Environmental-Friendly Detergents
Results:
After that one month of fermentation, we noticed there was appearance of white froth rising to the surface, especially for pear and orange fruit peels.
Based on a comparison scale of the colour intensity of the stain, pear and orange peels appear to be the most effective agent in removing the stains.
DARKLY STAINED (LEAST EFFECTIVE) LIGHTLY STAINED (MOST EFFECTIVE)
Hypothesis: Fruit peels mixture is able to act as effective cleaning
agent.
Introduction:
Household detergents have severe impacts on the environment. Chemicals and toxins present may bring harm to human body, environment as well as aquatic life.
Our project attempts to investigate the effectiveness of different fruit peels as ‘green detergent’ for cleaning purposes. In our experiment, we have decided to use apple, orange and pear peels because they are often being discarded and hence, easily available from home. The highlight of ‘green detergent’ is that it is organic and can be home-made at low costs, as compared to other products that contain synthetic. Furthermore, fruit wastes are generated in huge amounts from both households and commercial sectors, and large-scale production of ‘green detergent’ will help to put these waste into better use. .
Discussion & Conclusions:
The process that takes place to produce green detergent is a natural fermentation, which involves anaerobic respiration by microbes in the fruit waste.
We feel that this fruit peel mixture has a great potential to be used as a ‘green detergent’ which can help to reduce the impact on the environment. Besides being an environmental friendly product, the fruit peels mixture carry a sweet and pleasant scent after wash.
However, the time taken for the fruit peel mixture to be completely fermented may takes up time. Longer durations will be more ideal to ensure a more complete fermentation process, with a higher concentration of products formed. Products such as alcohol (from incomplete fermentation) and acetic acid (from complete fermentation) could be the reasons that green detergent has potential as cleaning agent. This is because ethanol is known to have antiseptic properties, which acetic acid has cleaning properties.
Given more time, we would like to investigate and explore on the factors that may help to reduce the duration for fermentation process and to carry out more reagent tests (e.g Sudan test, photographic film test) to find out the properties of stain.
Methodology:
Mix 30g brown sugar, 90g fruit peel, 30ml vinegar and 300ml in a water bottle.
Close the bottle tightly. Label the bottle, stating the date of fermentation and fruit peel used.
Leave the mixture for a month for fermentation to take place.
Loosen the bottle cap at least once every week, to let out the built-up gas. Also, gently shake the bottle to mix the contents.
After 1 month:
Stain white cloth with 1 dab of soya sauce and tomato sauce. Leave stain to stand for 10 mins.
Set up a control and label. At the same time, fill each test tube with different fruit peel solution.
Place stained cloth in each test tube of fruit peel solution and control separately. Leave it to stand overnight.
Compare the stained cloth on the following day.
Reflection:
Even though our project may still be at a preliminary stage but we believe that there’s much room for improvement for us to carry out more investigations. One of the main difficulties we faced as a group was time constraint as fermentation process was recommended to take place at least for three months, instead of one month.
Nonetheless, we were glad that we could explore a cost effective and environmental friendly solution to reduce the undesirable impacts on environment. .
References: