Monday - 1st day in lab

Bonjour mon colle'gues,

Today I was welcomed to the CERES/Locustox laboratory and introduced to Dr. Dogo Seck, Makhfousse Sarr, Anna Ndaye Traore, Marie Ndao, Adama Ndaye, and other CERES employees. Because introductions and the facility tour did not take long, Anna and I decided to step a head of our schedule and begin work today.
  
The GC-ECD was off upon our introduction (they turn it off over the weekend) and was plumbed to gas sources not used in our GC-ECD pesticide method. So, CERES re-plumbed the gas sources as per the method's specifications (i.e. He carrier and N2 makeup - N2 is from an in-lab generator). Following this, the back injection tower was located and successfully installed by CERES staff.

I noticed that CERES had their XLB capillary column in the front oven position and DB-17 in the back (note not a 17ms capillary column). Anna confirmed that she had switched their positioning and then re-installed the columns as per our GC-ECD method (i.e. DB-17 = front, XLB = back).  

Following column installation, I oversaw CERES staff (Anna*, Adama, Marie) perform routine maintenance on the GC-ECD. This included septum, injection port liner + wool, and O-ring replacement. I also took this opportunity to provide guidance on 'clean lab techniques' to be mindful of when performing instrument maintenance. For example, not touching new injection port liners with bare hands, cleaning the inside of the injection port with acetone when liners are changed, rinsing column ends with acetone during installation, etc. They seemed to be unaware that NOT following these procedures could negatively impact instrument performance... I will be sure to focus on this as training continues.

Upon completion of the above procedures, the instrument was powered on and successfully initialized by Chemstation software. Similarly to what Ted Haigh saw in 2011 however, the instrument detectors were reading very high for an idle instrument; Front ~ 46,000 and Back ~ 800,000! This could have been due to either an air leak or a dirty detector. I immediately dropped the oven temperature to 30 C in order to protect the capillary columns in case there was an air leak; though I don't think this is the source of our problem because inlet pressures are stable. Simultaneously, I ramped the detector temperatures to 350 C in order to volatilize organic residues that may have been deposited on the detector prior to my arrival. AND NOW WE WAIT - start time 1:05 PM. By 2 PM, the front detector had improved some, but the back detector reading was still extremely high.

**By 3:45 PM, close of business day, the detector background readings showed a marked improvement from earlier in the day (Front - 1400, Back - 2750). I will bake-out the entire system overnight and evaluate tomorrow morning. System bake-out =  Injection port - 300 C, Column oven - 300 C, Detectors - 350 C.

Specific points:

1. The lab has not received the care pack that OSU shipped on August 3, 2012 (10 days ago!), though it is indicated to have arrived in Dakar. Anna has coordinated with Makhfousse to try and locate the package. This is not ideal as some chemicals degrade with prolonged exposure to warm temperatures. Though I don't know if the ice packs surrounding the shipped materials are still viable, I do know that the current air temperature in Dakar is ~ 30 C. CERES would greatly improve their technical capacity by being able to tackle this task and prepare their own standards in the future. 
2. The lab does not have some tools that OSU would describe as basic, for instance a wool tool for loading injection port liners... We had to load liners with glass wool using a pair of forceps and a paperclip It took roughly 40 minutes prepare 2 liners; OSU staff completes this task in ~ 10 minutes. The lab only needs one or two wool tools, they are not very expensive, and they would greatly assist CERES staff towards a more efficient analytical workflow.
3.  CERES staff pay very close attention to me and desire knowledge. Anna, Adama, and Marie all made themselves available to work on the instrument whenever I found something out of place. Tre bon! I will continue to engage staff using questions as we proceed. 

Tomorrow we will evaluate the effect of the overnight bake-out, possibly inject solvent blanks, prepare logistics for passive sampling device extraction, and continue to hunt for the care package. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Au revoir pour l'instan