Team:Harvard/Dailybook/Week6/Widgetry

From 2008.igem.org

Goals for this week

  • Finish building remainder of chambers to bring us up to a total of 9 working fuel cells
  • Configure Kiethley/LabVIEW to support measurement from 9 fuel cells
  • Run test with 9 identical wt chambers to test for reproducibility of results
    • Use argon instead of nitrogen on anode side

First Nine-chamber Test

  • Clean and re-build fuel cells in preparation for experiment
    • Reused cathodes, but replaced Nafion membrane and anode
  • Placed built fuel cells under UV light to prevent contamination

Shaking.jpg

Variance Test with Shaking


What we did:

-Tested how much variance existed among chambers by running 9 parallel chambers with wt Shewie

-Switched nitrogen gas with argon gas on the anode side

-Shook chamber 1 manually to see the effect of shaking on current production


Results:

-Current production range was between 50-75 microAmps

-Red line (wt w/ shaking) went up to 500 microAmps when shaking vigorously

-Shows that shaking directly affects current production
-Therefore, amount of gas bubbling directly affects current production

- Possible to use this as direct test for computer interface