The focus for the day was to start GC troubleshooting and maintenance and to do an inventory of supplies that had been previously shipped to the lab in the summer of 2008. It was brought to my attention that the front column or DB-17ms was broken. at first glance it appeared to be broken in half, but I later found that only a 1-m section from the end was broken...so that is great news. We quickly took apart the GC inlet and it was found to be fairly dirty, especially the gold seals. The GC should have high purity helium for the inlet and nitrogen for the make-up gas, but both were plumbed with the He line. We fixed this problem but will not install new gas traps until we are ready to make GC runs. The outlet for the gases was venting into the lab onto the lab bench. It was discussed how to fix this and run tubing to the outside for contaminantion and health reasons.
The nitrogen generator used for nitrogen in the lab is showing a red light indicating nearest as I can tell (no manual) that the filter is bad. The members indicated that it has never been changed. I recommend we make changing the filter a priority. Without it we can't do reliable chromatography.
There is one full tank of class 2 helium.
During inventory the 2 Rainin pipets that were shipped over in the summer of 2008 were missing, but we did find 3 pipets that may work just as well. We will test them on tomorrow. Most of the glassware was present, but some beakers and flasks were missing. It became apperant that the if volumetric flasks are to be used to make standards then ground glass stoppers are needed as they very few.
I indicated to Adama that I need to see the deployment cages for the LFT asap since they are not in the lab yet....to be finished by saturday was what I was told. I hope to view them tomorrow.
Tomorrow we will be doing mostly GC maintenance and pipet verification. I will try to post tomorrow if I have internet.
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