Chris Daniell
Hello! My name is Chris Daniell, Shark Intern and IS alum, and thank you for reading my blog post!
Being a student at the Island School was the most amazing experience of my life. I was here in the fall of 2010, and I spent the majority of 2011 trying to return. And here I am, living on Eleuthera, and living the dream.
The three months I spent as an Island School student were the best of my life. I loved every aspect of life here, from the more environmentally conscious nature of life, learning new things and meeting new people, and exploring the island of Eleuthera. However, my favorite part of The Island School experience was the connection to the ocean. My life has been dominated by a love for two things: science and the creatures that inhabit the world’s oceans. The Island School gave me my first hands-on experience with marine science, and gave me the opportunity to work with marine biologists. I was placed Continue reading →
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As a Systems Intern at CEI this summer, I will work with Matt Poss, Sam Kenworthy and other members of the facilities team for the next two months. Although my main project this summer will be CEI’s biodiesel production, I will also help out with other projects that need an extra pair of hands.
At the moment we produce working fuel but don’t really know what quality it is. It’s easy to make biodiesel that seems to work well but has contaminants in it which relatively quickly destroy engines, are hazardous to the brewer and user, and which can actually be worse for the environment than petrodiesel. So having a clue about the quality of one’s product, as well as its various byproducts, is quite important! There are a lot of tests to which commercial biodiesel producers have to submit their product, but they generally require extremely costly equipment or highly trained analytical chemists, and- at least at the moment- cannot be carried out here on Eleuthera. Over the next few weeks I will therefore research different tests we can reasonably do for every batch of diesel we produce and begin to use these tests on our feedstock oil and the diesel we make. This will allow us to ensure that our vehicles run smoothly and give us an idea of how the quality of our biodiesel varies from batch to batch, which in turn will allow us to improve our production process. So far I have worked only briefly with Marco Continue reading →
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Education, Research, Outreach