My courses back at school consist basically of all
qualitative and learning hard facts; sometimes a lot of math and sciences which
I really enjoy. But I haven’t been
around many people would want to focus on social sciences. Coming to the LAKES program I was surprised
that out of the eight of us, two of us are engineer majors. I guess I have been exposed to all engineers
and health majors. I personally have
never taken a social science class. So,
coming here and seeing that the majority of us are into social science research
is a new experience for me. Most of the
things they are researching go over my head, because I have just never thought
of things like that. I think it is
pretty cool to see how all of these topics truly relate in the real world. I came to the LAKES program wanting to
explore more of the environmental engineering research side, but I wasn’t sure
what exactly that meant.
I have had the pleasure to be able to work alongside Dr.
Matthew Kutcha. We have been trying to
find a way to link what my engineering classes have taught me and geology,
which is short version of his field. The
goal of our team is incorporate our interests with that of a microbial fuel
cell or an MFC. An MFC is either a single
of double chamber system that uses the metabolism of bacteria to harvest
electrons that are emitted as a result of the metabolism. Usually the electrons are harvested and used
to power small scale electronic devices like simple LEDs. Larger, two chamber MFCs are sometimes used in
water restoration processes.
At the end of last week, Matt and I had come to the conclusion
that my project would basically be a bunch of coding and wiring and circuitry
because I had a wider background in that than I do with anything else he had a background
in. I was going to use an Arduino to
power a temperature and voltage sensor to take various data points of various
MFCs. Then I could have to code either a
website or an app to act as an interface for the data points to show up. Then just to use a little bit of the MFC I would
wire up some kind of motor to show that the voltage coming from the device was
real. Because, at least to me, coding isn’t
the most entertaining and I wanted to do something fun with the project.
This week Wednesday, I was lucky enough to sit through a
lecture given by one of the biology professors here at UW-Stout. He was giving us a deeper background in
microbiology, which I have never had. The
only biology class I have ever taken was an introduction to ecology a few
semesters ago. Before coming to the Menomonie,
I read a few articles and watched a couple of videos on the various fuel cells to
get the gist of what was going on inside of one. But after sitting through the lecture I was
able to pinpoint what I didn’t know about them.
During the lecture I came up with a new project proposal.
Now, my plan is to use our single cell MFCs to see which
kind of sediment environment can make the most amount of power. The environment that produces the most amount
of power I will create a power harvesting device to power a motor. My goal was
always to try and link power harvesting and circuitry/coding. But I guess my first idea pretty much drowned
the power harvesting idea out. I have done
some research on power harvesting in MFCs and learned that sometimes plants can
help to create more power at a faster rate.
So, one idea I had was to see which plants (that we have access to)
could help create a larger voltage drop over the MFC and from that plant, which
sediment environment could also help. By
sediment environment I mean, which limiting nutrient (be that phosphorus,
nitrogen or iron) would cause the largest impact.
I am pretty excited to start building these MFCs and start the
testing process. For the past week I have
been reading journal articles to get some background information. Which, don’t get me wrong, has been pretty
helpful to figure out what I want to go into for my project. But I am so excited to actually start the
testing.
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