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Week 8: Poster Presentations

This week I continued sampling the experiments I had been conducting using zero valent iron, zinc and magnesium to degrade CT, TCE and TCP. Overall the iron was the only one that was significantly oxidizing any of the contaminants and it was only signficiantly degrading CT and TCP.  I conducted an updated calibration curve for each of the contaminants for future analysis of the gas chromatograph peak area in relation to concentration in ppm.  Our hypotheses for why the zinc and magnesium were not performing up to par is passivation of the metals, not high/low enough pH or too little surface area ( mostly referring to the magnesium turnings ).  We will test these hypotheses next week.  In addition, this week included a poster session where interns presented their work to the department.  I found this part to be very rewarding.  It was nice to get to know professors in other labs; everyone is very ambitious and thoughtful and serve as excellent role models.