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
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