04/05/16

As I mentioned in the previous post, the experiment concerning floral foams with the clear flour came to an end as the company that Ecovative was testing for did not place a strict requirement/ priority. Consequently, today I started a new experiment but for the same project (dealing with floral foams).

The experiment deals with the concentration of surfactant. "A surfactant is briefly defined as a material that can greatly reduce the surface tension of water when used in very low concentrations." The surfactant used in particular for our floral foams is SugaNate. This material is very expensive and I was informed that it costs approximately $1.75 per block of floral foam using using only 0.1% concentration of SugaNate!!!. Thus, this test was to figure out the least amount of SugaNate required for floral foams still to perform their function. We tested concentrations of: 0.1%, 0.05% and 0.01% SugaNate. In short, what we are going to be looking for was how the uptake of blocks change with different concentrations of SugaNate.

The basic procedure is:
Suganate is incorporated into the Floral Foams via the pressure cookers. First, for approximately 1 hour, the block of floral foam is put in the cooker with NaOH in order to sterilize the foam (basic procedure). After this step, the block is moved to a different cooker with a mixture of SugaNate and water for about 5 minutes.

Hopefully, this coming Wednesday I find that 0.01% of SugaNate can still be used to produce similar results to that of 0.1% of SugaNate which will save Ecovative a lot of money!!

http://www.chemistry.co.nz/surfactants.htm