Week 5: A Welcomed Surprise

Wow! I am already half done with my internship and it feels as if I have accomplished nothing, and yet so much at the same time.

This week started off with our Midterm presentations. I had to present first, and even though it was a little intimidating, I gained confidence as I went and felt pretty good about it on the whole. It was really quite interesting to learn more about the other intern's projects, how they are progressing, how they have all hit snags along the way just as I have, it made me feel a little better about my project. Also, the wide range of topics and the things that we are trying to tackle in this world made me feel proud to be apart of the CMOP program.

On Wednesday I started propene headspace calibration on the GC, but noticed a slight decrease in concentration as I sampled. I decided to explore this and found that the concentrations of propene in my controlled batch bottles were decreasing with time, whether due to leaking or the need of equilibiation between phases is still unknown. I will need to do more tests, but a welcomed surprise came in the form of the hexanes I have been waiting on for the past week and a half. My experiments can commence once again!

Thursday was the NSF site visit, but due to my recent windfall I had to be in the lab most of the day to catch up on experiments that should have been finished by last week. It would have been interesting to learn more about how CMOP gets funded and the different types of research going on within the building, but alas that was not for me. I, instead, tested the hexanes to makes sure they would not interfere with product peaks (which they didn't), performed a calibration curve for allyl chloride, and sampled the propene batch bottles again (which had decreased in concentration even more overnight).

On Friday, I performed a allyl chloride degredation experiment, with decent result. Though I need to start looking at product production in the headspace to gain a better understanding of the chemisty that is occuring. But to do this, I will need to look more in depth at the mysterious propene disapearance problem...