[boiledmercedes]

Hi, I am a high school student planning a science project that includes burning biofuel, using cotton cordage soaked with it as a wick. I’m mainly concerned about the fumes from the methanol causing harm.
So far, I’ve planned on doing this outside, or at the very least with an open garage door with a few fans to circulate the air.
Is there any way I can take further precautions to make this safer, or is it unwise to burn biodiesel on a wick altogether?

[boiledmercedes]

Hi, I am a high school student planning a science project that includes burning biofuel, using cotton cordage soaked with it as a wick. I’m mainly concerned about the fumes from the methanol causing harm.
So far, I’ve planned on doing this outside, or at the very least with an open garage door with a few fans to circulate the air.
Is there any way I can take further precautions to make this safer, or is it unwise to burn biodiesel on a wick altogether?

[billnotgatez]

what do you expect the fumes to be made of?

a side curiosity
why methanol over ethanol?

[Enthalpy]

Hi,

biodiesel contains no significant amount of methanol. Methanol reacts with the fatty acid to make biodiesel, the reaction product is not a mixture. Remaining methanol is removed at production, any traces are not dangerous and possibly already evaporated, and after a flame they're gone.

So, I have no worry about methanol in biodiesel, nor about burning it with a wick. I have no opinion about the merit of (thin) cotton cordage as a wick; candle wick can be bought too, or a match suffices. As a teen, I used fiberglass web as a mega-wick for wax (and I sprayed on the wick water whose instant evaporation achieved a wax spray in air that went woosh, 1m³ flame, don't do that one indoors).

I don't expect harmful combustion products from biodiesel, and at room temperature it won't burn without a wick, so playing indoor seems safe. BUT I recommend to make any fire outdoors, as I already had big luck several times as a teen. You never know what goes wrong: unexpected composition (additives in biodiesel!), fuel getting hot, other items catching fire...

I don't know how used you're with playing with matches... Some general ideas:

• Be paranoid. Prepare for what you do not expect.
• Train mentally and in movement what to do in some situations. Prepare the surroundings: remove flammable materials, clean an escape way. When it happens, you have no time.
• Mistrust (=remove) all fluffy materials, gases, liquids, plastics, and everything you haven't already tried to burn. Celluloid or hygiene cotton for instance would surprise you.
• Know how to extinguish your fire before you start it. Prepare the means. On liquids, use sand, powder... not water.
• Better have a second person farther away, trained and equipped to intervene.
• Will you make a demo in public? Rehearse it before, at the same place, with the same hardware and procedure as the demo.

With biodiesel and normal operation, that's huge overkill. I expect nothing worse than a burning candle. But if things go wrong, precautions make the difference. I survived twice by chance and once thanks to precautions and training. By definition, the unexpected isn't predicted.

[billnotgatez]

@boiledmercedes
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I have combined your duplicates