Blog Post Week 4

Figure 1. Sodium Chloride Solution in the making

This week for the microplastics I started with making a five molarity sodium solutions that is necessary for the separation process. This took a very long time. I started with adding the appropriate amount of salt need to have three moles in a liter, once that was dissolved I would continue adding one mole at a time. It took a really long time to dissolve the fifth mole of salt. To help dissolve the salt I used heat. I came in on Monday to actually try to do the separation. This was fail, I started with weighing out 50grams of soil that had been previously sieved by Matt. Once I weighed out my sample I added 50 grams into a 500mL separation apparatus and 50 grams into a 1000mL separation apparatus. I then continued to add 200mL of the sodium chloride solution to each of the apparatus. Very carefully I took each apparatus and shook them to mix the soil and the solution. Once the mixture settled I attempted to let the soil run through the apparatus to only keep the microplastics which would be floating. This process did not work, the apparatus got clogged so nothing went through. I got that cleaned and I moved on to do hydrogen peroxide digestion that Matt had. The sample was supposed to stop bubbling and we were supposed to dry it. It did not go this way; the sample would not stop bubbling. We are going to attempt to use a different percentage of hydrogen peroxide. Another thing I did was go out and collect three soil sample, these sample had to be dried before I could do anything with them. When I came back the samples were dried so I continued to pulverize the samples. Once the samples were pulverized I continued to weigh out 100 grams and pass the samples through the sieve. I also tried to do the hydrogen peroxide digestion with these samples, they continued to bubble. This stage of the project is really trying just to get everything working. For the Legionella project we ran PCR on Pseudomonas aeruginosa DNA to create more positive controls for ourselves and the microbiology labs.  

Figure 2. Clogged seperation apparatus 

Figure 3. Hydrogen Peroxide Digestion