ASU Internship-Week 1

    I am excited to start blogging once again, and I hope everyone is having a great start to the year.This semester, I will be doing my internship at ASU with Professor Ryan Trovitch's research group. The focus of my research will be synthesizing a molybdenum metal complex, and studying its catalytic behavior for reducing carbon dioxide to methanol and other useful organic compounds.
    The catalyst is an inorganic coordination complex, that consists of a central atom (called coordination center), surrounded by various organic/inorganic molecules (called ligands). The ligand in my catalyst is called alpha-diimine (DI). The ligand and the molybdenum atom share electron density, which gives the molybdenum a 2+ net charge (resonance structure). Due to this 2+ net charge, the molybdenum complex can undergo some very interesting chemistry...

Picture of the ligand

Week 12

It is almost that time of the year!! That time when you start finishing up collecting your data, writing your paper, and preparing for the final presentation. If anyone is wondering how my research is going. Well, let’s say that it could be worse. I am collecting my data by measuring Optical density of my sample every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. So far, the data isn’t that good for the entire sample. Unfortunately, I am having very slow growth rate for 2 samples and no growth another. I know that there must be a mistake that I made, but I can’t seem to figure out what I did wrong. I

Anyway, I hope everyone has a great Thanks giving vacation!! (And good luck black Friday shopping)

Various Algae Samples

Week 11

The other day I realized that there was some interesting white foam in one of my algal containers. I didn’t seem to be air bubbles from aeration. I am almost 100% certain that it was contamination. Fortunately, the presumed contaminated algae culture was an old culture that I wasn’t collecting any data from. Nevertheless, I was very concern. Honestly, I didn’t know what else to do besides adding more algae media.  I thought that maybe I could promote algae growth, and that would eliminate the contamination. I gave it a try, and guess what?? I checked on that same algal culture today, and there wasn’t any white foam!!

I don’t know, maybe it wasn’t contamination, but at least it’s gone. 

White foam is gone!!

Week 10

I am never satisfied with my performance, and this stresses me out a lot. I don't know if anyone else feels like that, but it drives me crazy. I am starting to feel very frustrated with my project, because there is so many things I wish I could do different or expand on. Honestly, I am doing the best I can with the resources that I have.

Today I started new  algal cultures, because I am going to start recording the optical density, and get my data from this new cultures. I also received my control TODAY. I am going to be using Chlorella as my control. Okay, the idea is that Chlorella is a well known algae strain (used for biofuel), and I could compare the absorbency of Chlorella to the absorbency of the four algae strains I have. There is some research that optical density can be used to quantify growth.  There other better methods of quantifying growth, but due to lack of resources (and time constrain), optical density is the way to go. I am only going to be collecting data for three weeks (basically right before project is due). This would give me some data to present. Next week, I want to blog about the mistakes (which were many),and lessons I learned up to this point. 

Honestly, algae is pretty cool, and I hope more research is done on it, but I will not continue my research next semester. I am moving on to something that I find a bit more interesting...

CO2 REDUCTION!!! 

So the algae is growing, and that is a good thing (I guess), but then I have a huge problem. The problems is that I started off with 50ml of water sample (from each source), but I had no idea the algae concentration in each sample. I realized this was a problem after I did some research (and some thinking), but didn't know how I could fix this. I talked with Josh and he had some good suggestions. He suggested that I could use a similar method he did when he worked in a chemical company.

The procedure Josh suggested works really well when you have a homogenous solution, and my algae might not be completely homogenous, but it is very close to that. Anyway, I have to talk to Anil about it, and see if he thinks it is a good idea or not. We have five weeks for the semester to be over, and I am not pressure at all (a bit of sarcasm there). Hope everyone's projects is going well, and have spectacular weekend!!!

How was everybody's week?? 

Well, my week was awesome!! I am very happy  to communicate that I am going to be part of a research group at ASU (Tempe Campus). I am very excited, but at the same time nervous, because I want to succeed in this new opportunity. The type of research I am going to focus on is GREEN CHEMISTRY RESEARCH!!! I never thought I would have this amazing opportunity. I went to visit Professor Ryan Trovitch today about joining his research group, and he briefly explained to  me his area of research. Honestly, I was a bit overwhelmed,because he was talking about unfamiliar topics, but I tried my best to keep up with him.Professor Trovitch also gave me a couple of research papers to look at, and showed me his lab (its pretty amazing). I wish I had taken some pictures to share with everyone. 

GREEN CHEMISTRY IS THE FUTURE!!

In other news, my algae is starting to grow. I will keep everyone updated, but other than that, there is nothing much to say about my project this semester. 

Image Source: http://climateinc.org/2012/01/green-chemistry-and-clean-energy/ 

Week 7

I am finally starting to grow new algae samples. I realized that up to this point I've been learning through the many mistakes that I made.Like for example, I shouldn't have started growing algae sample on such a small containers. However, the past is behind me, and I ready to start fresh. Honestly, this last few week I felt like i wasn't going anywhere with my project. I really appreciate the help that Anil has been giving me,and hopefully everything will go well. I have everything i need to start the new growth samples, and my only problem is the shortage of algae media. For right now, I will have to use the rest of my media wisely. I think that I am going to have to get new media at my own expense, because I haven't received any of the supplies Anil ordered.