Research

Fuels now are mostly used to cook food. Among the common fuels are coal, petroleum, biogas, and charcoal. Charcoal has been mostly used in cooking. Most people, especially those, who live in mountains, used charcoal to cook their foods. But by using charcoal, people would spend a lot of time cooking. It would take almost an hour or two just to cook a meal.

Commercial charcoals are made out of wood. This type of charcoal takes a lot of time on cooking. Charcoals are now being neglected because it is too time consuming. Households would rather use LPG than charcoal. LPG is more expensive than charcoal, but it cooks faster. Charcoal has been always the cheapest fuel in the world.

This study focuses on making a new type of charcoal that could lessen the cooking time of foods, especially rice. This new charcoal is made out of banana peelings.

Banana peelings compose of carbon, a main component of charcoal. Banana peelings are organic, and are not harmful to the ozone layer. Banana has been a common fruit in the Philippines, but its peeling has been a waste.

By this study, this study could also help reduce and reuse banana peelings, which are useless to the Philippines. This study could also help lessen the depletion of wood.

With the new type of charcoal, the cooking time of food, especially rice, may be lesser or could be comparable to the cooking time of commercial charcoal. People may have more time enjoying their meal rather than waiting for their meal to be cooked.

The procedure of this charcoal is somehow, tiring. We would still have to pound the banana peelings before letting it undergo destructive distillation. Here are the concrete procedures of this project:

1. Collect as much banana peeling as you can. As much as possible, it should be fresh ones.

2. Ones the banana peelings are collected start cutting it into strips so that it would be easier to pound. Just use scissors for cutting.

3. By using a mortar and pestle, we started pounding the stripped banana peelings.

4. Ones the pounded banana peelings are mushy, you may start molding the pounded banana peeling.

5. By squeezing the pounded banana peeling, the juice of the peeling would be removed, and thus the pounded banana peeling would be formed into a circle ball.

6. Dry the banana peeling balls under the heat of the sun for 6 to 8 hours, depending on the weather.

7. Once the Balls are totally dried, you may let it undergo destructive distillation like that of the commercial charcoal.

And that is how we made our charcoal. It was a little bit exhausting, but it was worth it. We had to spend a lot of money just for the print outs!!

But everything was worth it. We surprisingly won 3^rd place in the Science fair last February 23, 2007!!! My groupmates, Byron Douglas Enriquez, Anjeanette Semblante, and Shallunah Faith Leopardas, were absolutely shocked that we won! It was like a dream. There was a cash prize. We got to pay all our depths. Phew! Everything paid off. The project is such a unique thing that I would never forget.