Week 2 - Monday

Today I was hoping to bring the GC online as well as load the new method for the current list of analytes. It did ultimately happen but not without faults. The nitrogen generator we were going to use would not hold pressure so after further investigation we noticed the other generator that had many many hours counted hours even when not running. We are attempting to used this nitrogen generator now. We brought up to temperature of the inlet oven and detectors and they will continue to be held at typical operating temperature overnight. I will assess the baseline then. When I left for the day the detector were reading ~2,000 to 1,500 and dropping somewhat slowly. Adama, Anna, Marie, and Vieux (Trainee) and I were present for the first bit, but once I ramped up the temperatures I mostly was alone, but was showing Anna, Marie, and Adama what I was doing and explained why.

Once again we experienced prolems with the He pressure regulator but I think we have "hopefully" fixed it. Adama, Anna, Marie, Vieux, Baba, Makhfousse, and I were present.

Baba, Adama, and I paid a visit to the fellow making the cages. I guess there was some mis-communication somewhere because there was only 1 spider per cage made, not the 2 like I was expecting. It does not look like we will be going out to the field for a deployment until Tuesday and Wednesday of week 3. The cages and spiders that were produced however were of nice quality. There was a problem however that I alluded to last week. The cages and spiders are a bit small. The cage dimensions are as follows; diameter = 15.5 cm, height = 15 cm. Spider dimensions; diameter = 15 cm, height = 4 to 3.5 cm. We were able to take two cages and 4 spiders back with us to the lab to see if a regular length (1 m) LFT would fit. We found that if a spring were to be used the length of each LFT would need to be anwhere from 93-95 cm long. But as can be seen in the picture below we found a way of winding it around the center pin to make a 1-m LFT work (shown in the bottom picture). It does seem quite secure, so I think we can make it work
As is evident by the pictures above we practice making LFT today. Adama, Marie, Anna, Vieux, and I were present. All seem to be proficient after some practice. Now we need to work on efficiency.

Tomorrow I will further evaluate the GC and we may begin standards paperwork and gather of supplies for the upcoming field deployment if we have time.