Benjamin Leong, #Week 4, Disaster!

As one may infer from the title of this post, things have not gone as planned during the past week.

I discovered last Monday morning that majority of my algae cultures were unfortunately contaminated. For half them, or rather all the cultures for one species of algae that I was growing, they were cross-contaminated with algae of a different species, that was being grown in the other three cultures. Of the remaining cultures that were not cross-contaminated, two were instead contaminated with microorganisms that originated from the last culture. As such, I have to restart my experiment. However, instead of using the exact same species of algae, I will be swapping out one of them for another species of algae. Restarting the experiment is going to take a few days though, as I will be reusing the bottles that I had used to cultivate my previous batch of algae. But, I have been given permission by my PI to carry out the experiment as planned at the start: cultivate the algae for some period of time, and then proceed to harvest them and carry out further testing for carbohydrates, proteins and fatty acids. This is good news as algae used for such tests are usually grown for about one and a half to two months, but due to time constraints, my PI was kind enough to make an exception. 

In the meantime, I have been making progress with my side project on the electro-flocculation of algae that I am collaborating with my lab partner Brendon. While it does involve a lot of waiting, the electro-flocculation set-up that I am using for the project is rather simple, which reduces the risk of incurring errors, and I do have help from Brendon which is nice. The electro-flocculation process involves the conduction of electricity through a solution of algae, in which two electrodes are immersed in. When current flows through the solution, the algae which are normally neutral particles, will become charged and begin to clump together as a result. After which, the algae clumps get pumped into a filter funnel containing a handkerchief which acts as a filter. These clumps will then get caught by the handkerchief, while smaller clumps or algae that have yet to clump will pass through the filter and fall back into the original solution of algae. The success of the each trial is determined by the color of the algae collected in the filter funnel. Since the algae needs to be in good condition after recovery, the filtered algae must be green, which is its original color, in order for the trial to be successful. On the other hand, If the algae is brown in color, it means that the algae has been literally fried and hence the trial is unsuccessful. The goal of this project is to discover the optimum conditions for electro-flocculation of algae, with voltage, flow rate, species of algae, and type of solution being the areas of adjustment. Brendon and I are currently focusing on studying the effects of flow rate on one species of algae, using a voltage that he and a past intern found was the optimum voltage for electro-flocculation. However, we may move on to studying the use of different types of media for electroflocculation.

Looking forward to next week, I will be restarting or seeding my new cultures on Monday, which hopefully will not be as chaotic as it was the first time around. In addition, I will also be conducting more electroflocculation trials with my lab partner Brendon.