futurefuelinternship

[futurefuelinternship]

Last Week

Putting my last two updates together because, to be honest, with easter break and finals studying I figured that it would make more sense to do a lengthy combined update rather than two individual really small updates.

While I was gone over easter break, the developmental crew finished the scaled up reactions that we had started before I left. They were able to get 99% conversion, which was really surprising considering the amount of issues that we ran into originally, and they finished out the reaction and showed me the final product, all jarred up and ready to be experimented on! It was really cool to see that - that was something that I had a pretty significant hand in creating. Since my time in this internship is coming to a close, I’m not going to do a crazy amount on a new project - though Bryon did show me some details about a different synthesis they’re looking into running. These last few weeks have mostly been me getting back into the analytical lab to help run a few samples, or helping to clean glassware, hoods, and other things that the others in the lab just need a helping hand on. I also got to take a walk around the FutureFuel campus with my boss on my last day in, and that was pretty cool. They have some GC’s hooked up to be constantly taking samples from some continuous batches of products, and they measure the purity of the batches every 10 minutes to make sure they catch any issues asap. It was also crazy to see the sheer size of many of these processes - nothing will make you feel smaller than walking right next to a 4 million gallon tub of methanol. Also, on my last day itself everyone was super great. Joan got everyone donuts, and I talked with people about what I’d be doing in Houston, and what I hoped to bring back when I came back in the fall!

I gave my presentation as well as few days ago, and it went pretty well! In hindsight, I wish I had reviewed the chemistry of the reaction I worked on a little bit more. I felt like I wasn’t as prepared to answer chemistry questions as I probably should have been, but that’s a great learning experience before I enter Junior / Senior seminar. I felt like I definitely conveyed to the freshman that they should be looking into opportunities, be it with FutureFuel or with another program, and that’s really what I was hoping to accomplish through that.

In personal news, I’m not going to lie, these last few weeks have hit me a bit like a train. Organic Chemistry is wrapping up, and no matter how much I study I don’t think I’ll ever feel ready for those finals. I’m a little bit worried about my last physics exam - I think I did the whole thing correctly, or at least well enough to get an A, but since nearly the whole class is just 2 test grades I’m pretty worried about it, but it’s already turned in so all I can do is wait. I’m pretty excited to be doing research with Dr. Hollandsworth and Dr. Schwanke next semester too - I think it’ll be pretty cool to be working on such different fields, and since I’ll get course credit I think I’ll be able to devote the time I need to in order to do well. I’m a little worried about taking on too much, so I’m definitely going to look at my commitments and see what I need versus what I can let fall away soon. At the end of the day, I’m enjoying myself, and that’s what matters. If I learned one thing from this internship, it’s that loving your job and the people you work with is really one of the most important things you can do.

[futurefuelinternship]

Thirteenth Week

This week I was only able to come in on Monday to Wednesday, because of easter break. Basically, we decided to scale up the reaction that I was running last week, so I took 100g of our starting material, set up a reaction chamber, and let it run and got about 90% conversion to our final product. This was pretty good, because we ran into some big issues when we scaled it up - most notably being that we couldn’t run the reaction in a sealed environment now, so all of the water in my solution was boiling out. We ended up diluting it a lot and running it in just a normal atmosphere environment, and then on wednesday we concentrated it back down to the original amount and lowered the temperature. I’ve honestly realized that while organic chemistry can tell us a lot about how to expect reactions to go, and what potential issues we can run into, actually figuring out what conditions to run these reactions at is where this chemistry goes back to being the empirical science that I’m used to. They’re probably going to finish this reaction scale up before I come back though, because I won't be in for likely a week.

In personal news, easter break is coming up and I’m really pumped to go out of state. Headed to NYC to go see some broadway for my christmas/birthday present we booked a while back. I’m really stressed, because Dr. Irosha assigned the entirety of chapter 20 over the break, but on the bright side the quiz over that material will be bonus points, which I super need. I’m just ready for a real break - longer than a weekend.

[futurefuelinternship]

Twelfth Week

This week I had a math exam, so I didn’t come in on monday. What I did this week was test the efficacy of my seperation of our product from the unwanted salt. My plan was to do this via solubility, because our salt is ionic while our product is most definitely not - pretty basic General Chemistry concept. Earlier this month when I ran my solubility tests, I found that a mixture of Toluene:Methanol worked really well as dissolving our product. When dissolving our actually formed products with this with the toluene:methanol mixture though it worked to a certain extent, in that I lowered it by 10%, but I wasn’t able to completely separate out all of the salt. There was still some amount (~2%) left over. Not sure where this part of the project is going right now though, as Bryon would like to scale up the actual reaction before continuing to explore this.

In personal news, Scots Fest is this weekend, and I’m not looking forward to it. I have a lot of organic chemistry studying to do, and TKE always has a lot to do during the weekend, so it’ll be kind of a drag. Though getting to experience it with all the new brothers will be nice. I’m really just ready at this point for easter break to hit.

[futurefuelinternship]

Eleventh Week

This week, I was only able to work Tuesday and Wednesday, because I had my OChem midterm on monday and wanted to stay on campus to review my reactions, and then I left Thursday at 3AM to go to the Alpha Chi convention to present my REU research. On tuesday, I spent all day in the analytical lab running titrations. I ran ~10 titrations to figure out the acidity of different biodiesel products, and I ran ~10 titrations in order to figure out the percentage of water. Other than this, all of the analytical samples either were in progress, or we didn’t have enough sample to finish all the requested testing. It’s kind of weird, at most jobs it seems like you want to get ahead, but out here getting ahead typically means that something went wrong and we couldn’t do all the testing, lol.

On wednesday, I was in the analytical lab, and I was told to concentrate down my product, and remove a contaminant. I did this by vacuum filtration, and found that we actually have these really nice disposable vacuum filtration, which makes figuring out exactly how much solid we collected really easy. Additionally, afterwards I rotovapped down my solution, and sent it off to figure out how much contaminant was still left in it.

All in all, most of this week was just busy work that needed to get done, but I think we’re at the edge of some cool stuff in this project, so I’m hoping that next week we get some cool results. Additionally, next week I’ll get my evaluation back, so hopefully it’s good things!

[futurefuelinternship]

Tenth Week

This week, I worked on Monday, Tuesday, and Friday. I had to call out on Wednesday in order to see the doctor. Monday and Friday I primarily spent in the analytical lab just running a few GC measurements that are identical to the ones I’ve already talked about. I’ve found that I like spectroscopy a lot more than chromatography honestly, but they’re both pretty interesting. On tuesday I worked in the developmental lab, and was taught how to use a rotovap. In this case, I was removing all of my solution from my product, but we typically use this to “condense down” a solution - meaning that we turn a solution with what we want, say biodiesel residue, into a film of just the solvent. It’s pretty handy, especially for the project that I’m working on. But for this week, I just combined all of the product from my solubility testing into one round bottom flask, and collected the rest to put in a new vial later.

On Friday we actually had to evacuate right when I was supposed to leave. I didn’t stick around to figure out why, I just told them I was headed home anyway and went to class. So did a few other workers who were headed home, so it was like I was with the cool kids, lol.

[futurefuelinternship]

Ninth Week (#SpringBreak!)

This week I stayed in town for spring break to get a lot of hours done at FutureFuel, and to get started on a real long-term project. I’m not sure what is IP protected and what isn’t at this point, so to speak in exceedingly generic terms, I designed an organic synthesis wherein I took an organic molecule which we work with at the plant, and added some specific functional groups to it, which allowed us to synthesise a product similar to one used in major home & beauty products. After doing this, I began to do lab work on designing a process for the second step of the synthesis - specifically what temperature, pH, and equivalence ratios that the synthesis would be carried out at. I did this by using prior research via SciFinder (thanks Dr. Grafton for making me get an ACS membership - really paid off!) and talking with the PI to find out what had already been done. By the end of my first day, we had gotten 95% conversion to the desired product, and by the end of my penultimate day we had 98%. I’ve started another series of reaction tests that I hope to see the results of on Monday, but I think working in this lab whenever I’m available will be cool.

Additionally, I started work on the second step of the reaction, which is basically figuring out how to separate our major product from the minor products which contaminate it. My idea for this was for us to use a solvent that would dissolve our major product, but leave our minor product for us to filter or distill out. I started researching some potential solvents, had a lot of them turned down due to expense or safety concerns, and then we started testing solubility by slowly adding x5 amounts of solvent to a set amount of a stand in for our final product. What we found with this is that none of the solvents we selected, so far, work under the conditions we’ve placed them, even at much higher ratios of solvent to solute, or much higher temperatures, which is upsetting. My hope is to look into the specific polarity of the molecule, and see if I can make a more educated guess on solvents - my initial hypotheses were mainly based on my presumption as to what the major IMF’s would be. Additionally, I’d like to test higher temperatures, though low boiling points are at play.

The plan for the rest of the semester is for me to play it by ear and basically assume that I’ll be spending the day in analytical, but if I’m needed in developmental then I’ll head over there. Additionally, there are a couple more instruments that I haven’t been exposed to, and I’ve mostly gotten work in the titration lab. So running more samples in the spectroscopy lab is something I hope I get to do. I also would love to keep helping out in developmental, though I don’t know how feasible that prospect is.

Lastly, for my weekly personal update, spring break has been pretty relaxed - I’ve mostly just worked, had dinner, watched netflix, studied a bit, then slept. I got to have a really nice night with some friends last saturday and just get some stress out of my system, which is important because this weekend is shaping up to be a lot of catch-up studying. Also, about 20 minutes before posting this, one of my lab mates just came by to invite me to a trivia night with some of the other scientists and engineers! Though I can’t go this week because of my OChem midterm, I’m super excited to go next week! It’ll be a great way to recuperate from a long few weeks, and a great way to get to know these guys outside of the work environment.

[futurefuelinternship]

Eighth Week

This week honestly wasn’t too crazy in terms of work. The analytical team generally trusts me now, so I ran a lot of developmental sample tests by myself - namely a few %TMAC tests, % Water, % Acidity, etc. Lots of titrations happening, which is good because I’m reviewing what I’ve learned, but I’m excited about learning new material over spring break!

This week I also learned how to find ppm of iron content in our samples! Small amounts of iron presence can be correlated to a discoloration, so basically we take a small amount of our sample (~.1g), dilute it to 100mL, take ~10mL of that, dilute it again, and then run it through a UV-Vis analyzer, which then gives us a spectrum which we can use to find the parts per million count of Iron. Learning this was pretty nice, because I’m somewhat familiar with UV-Vis and IR spectroscopy, so it was nice to come back to instrumentation that I’m comfortable with right before spring break.

The plan for spring break is that I’m going to be working in another lab, doing some research on novel compounds that they’re coming up with. I haven’t been told much else about it, and I don’t know what I’ll be able to talk about vs what is IP protected, so my next post is either going to be super long or super short. We’ll see!

In personal news, I’ve just kind of spent the week waiting for the break. Going back home a few weeks ago gave me some energy back, but dealing with life recently took it all away, so I’m ready to get some rest in. I also have a LOT of studying to catch up on, because with everything going on I’ve kind of just been doing enough to get by, and I need to review my material before I start to really fall behind. Hopefully that goes well!

[futurefuelinternship]

Seventh Week

This last week was pretty insane for me, both in terms of work and in terms of personal life. I finally got to run some samples independently! Took a couple of % water measurements, % acidity titrations, and I learned how to do visual titrations using the auto-titrators. Sadly, those aren’t as automatic as the name would have you believe - Basically, we take our titrant and use the software for the auto-titrator to manually add some at a rate we determine (in mL/min), which gives us a very accurate number for the amount added - though the analysis is still qualitative since we’re using color change of an indicator to run this instead of change in mV.

Additionally, this week I learned how we use Differential Scanning Calorimetry to find the melting point of samples. DSC heats up a small (mg) amount of sample, as compared to a reference sample, and plots the amount of heat added as a function of temperature. Through doing this, we can plot the point at which adding heat no longer changes the heat of the sample, which is the point in which it has started to melt, and we can find the melting point from that “melting curve” as well. Additionally, through the use of an attached refrigeration unit, we can find the freezing point, and the sample’s “cooling curve.” Also, when I was learning about this apparatus, I learned that recrystallization of a product that forms multiple crystals at different temperatures can allow us to isolate one specific product, which we can learn how to do by measuring the recrystallization process through this machine.

Lastly, this week I also learned how to use our Thermogravimetry analyser, which is a technique wherein the sample’s mass is measured against temperature, while the temperature surrounding the sample is increased. We do this by placing our sample onto a small swing-like balance, which is then lowered into a thermal chamber, and the mass is recorded while the temperature varies.

For the weekly personal update™, this week I got into a pretty terrible car accident, and I had to go back home to deal with that. Basically, I was able to borrow my sisters car for the semester, and now it looks like my car will be able to be fixed, so the financial consequences shouldn’t be too terribly bad. I’m not at 110% anymore though, fell pretty far behind class-wise while spending so much time dealing with this. Additionally, I wasn’t rehired as an RA for next year, which hurt a lot because I feel that I’ve done a great job as an RA this semester - my residents have all told me so. But I know I’ve got great friends who are helping me get through this all, and now I’ve got to look ahead and figure out how I’m going to move forward.

[futurefuelinternship]

Sixth Week

This week, on Tuesday I got to go into the spec lab and run a sample through there. I ran an ICP spectra, which basically entailed me placing a small amount of developmental sample into an internal standard solution, and then diluting it with a carrier liquid, and running it through an ICP. Basically, a gas is “inductively” heated via an electromagnetic coil. This ionizes the gas, and makes it conductive and function as a plasma (in our case, Argon is the gas of choice.) This plasma is focused due to the magnetic field such that it almost looks like the top of a Bunsen burner flame. Afterwards, the machine creates an aerosol mist of sample and the carrier liquid, and inserts it into the atmospherically purged system with our plasma. The plasma dries the carrier aerosol as it enters, and excites the developmental material’s electrons, which then causes atomic emissions to occur. The spectrum of these emissions is taken, and correlated to the varying amounts of elements present within a sample. Additionally, on Friday I ran an experimental method wherein we found the amount of polyethylene present in a developmental sample of bio diesel. Basically, the experiment used the varying polarity of different compounds present in the solution to isolate our polyethylene by solubility in various solvents. Once we had these polyethylene isolated, we took a sample and calculated the parts per million of polyethylene in bio diesel.

On a more personal note, I went back home this last weekend for my birthday to visit with friends/family. Honestly, my birthday was somewhat of an excuse to do this, the more important reason is that I was feeling real extreme burnout. I wasn’t studying, started to let my grades slip, and I ended up having to drop choir just to make some time in my schedule to catch up. (Hence why this journal is a little bit late - but it’s my birthday today so you can’t be mad at me!) However, I’m back at 110% now that I’ve had some time to relax and reflect, and it it was really worth it. I’m back on campus and I’m feeling a lot more excited to figure out what exactly I’m aiming to do with my degree. I realized that I was looking at my courses/extracurriculars/life with an outlook of “How can this work for me?” and not with an attitude of “How can I better serve the community I participate in?” and I think that was a big cause of me feeling burnt-out. I don’t need to know right now what my purpose in life is - that’s why I’m a college sophomore, it’s my time to learn. What I do need to know is how I’m working to better my college, my workplace, my fraternal bonds, my family, and the things that matter most in my life. If I’m working with an altruistic purpose in mind, I’ll get to a place of love, no matter what I’m doing.

[futurefuelinternship]

Fifth Week

Still a little in shock that I’ve already been at FutureFuel for five weeks, it feels like I only just started yesterday! This week, I learned about how we test different samples for their viscosity using a “Cannon-Fenske” Tube, which is basically a tube with a specific bore size, that correlates to a factor for viscosity. We place the liquid into it, and place the tube in a large vat of water that’s kept at a specific temperature, and then let it run for ~200 seconds for an ideal measurement to avoid getting unusable / not-significant data. As a sample gets more viscous, you want to use a bigger tube to keep it at ~200 seconds, and you take the time it takes for your sample to move from one marking to another, and multiply that by your viscosity factor, and that gives you the viscosity of your sample. Additionally, this week I learned how to take density measurements, which basically consists of putting a small amount of sample into a clean measuring apparatus, at a specific temperature, and then it takes the density by using it’s known volume and the mass inserted. I also learned how our flame-point measurement apparatus works - which basically consists of us placing our sample into a sealed metal container, which opens to allow a heated filament to enter the top, and if any combustion of the vapor is detected, it stops heating the sample, and prints our measurement. It starts 20 degrees below our entered point, and goes to 20 degrees above, because we take these measurements not for literature publication, but rather for transportation safety to make sure that these chemicals are being loaded into the proper containers, and that the people transporting them keep them in safe conditions.

This week I also ran some developmental samples, and took the water measurements, % Acid measurements, density, flame point, and cloud point measurements for some new developmental chemicals. I think soon I’ll be able to run samples all on my lonesome, which is exciting!

Additionally, I got to go into another section of the lab, and look at their ICP’s, Sulfur/Nitrogen Analyzers, X-Ray analyzers, and FTIR machine. They have an extensive collection of spectra for their IR too, which was pretty cool to be able to take a measurement and just have OMNIC search their library for what it is. I’m hoping to spend some more time in that lab to learn more about analytical work.

On a personal note as well, this week was really difficult for me. I had to call out of work on Wednesday and Friday, because on Wednesday I stayed up too late studying, and then late Thursday night I had a personal emergency and didn’t get to sleep, but Dr. Joan was incredibly understanding both times, and reassured me that she wanted this to be an educational and positive experience for me - not something that is a stressor in my life, which was exactly what I needed to hear at that point. I’m hoping to come in more this week, but I’m also trying not to get down on myself if I can’t. Need to remember that I’m here to learn, and to enjoy doing chemistry. 

[futurefuelinternship]

Fourth Week

I never know how to start these now that I’m in lab completely now, but this week I learned how to use a few basic instruments. When I arrived on Tuesday, I saw that Dr. Joan and Crystal were both working on a TOC instrument, which calculates the amount of carbon in a sample, via a combustion reaction with Na2SO4 and organic carbon to create and detect CO2, leaving inorganic carbon behind, which allows us to measure Total Carbon, Inorganic Carbon, and calculate Organic Carbon in a sample. The issue with this, was that we were getting a negative amount of inorganic carbon for some samples randomly, meaning that likely the detector was misfiring, and giving us more inorganic carbon after the reaction than had been initially detected, however, we couldn’t find a correlation across the data points where these negative peaks occurred, so we’re not entirely sure as to reason right now. While they worked on that, I read about the theory behind that instrument, which was pretty cool.

After this, I went with Dr. Joan to learn about what Cloud Point is and how we measure it. Basically, we have an instrument which slowly cools down a set amount of sample and a technician monitors it and marks the point at which solids start to form so that we can know how the freezing point has been adjusted. For example, we’re working with Biodiesel made from different methods, and the cloud point can be a good indicator of whether the process is viable because fuel needs to freeze at low temperatures. Additionally, this week I learned how to use our Auto Titrators, and ran some % Hydrogen in Acid numbers on some development samples. All in all, this week most of what I did was learn how our instrumentation works, and hopefully, soon I’ll be trusted to start running samples on my own!

[futurefuelinternship]

Third Week

Thankfully, the lords of chemistry heard my prayers, and I was able to finish off all my training by Tuesday and I FINALLY got into the lab! This first week primarily consisted of me going around and meeting everyone, telling them where I’m from, what I’m going to be doing, and making sure they know that I’ll be available to help them do the grunt work they need me to do.

Additionally, this week I was notified that I was accepted as an ACS-SCI Scholar, which is an incredible honor. It was a little awkward to explain to Dr. Joan that I would not be in Batesville this summer, especially because in my interview I had assumed that I wouldn’t get this ACS internship and told them I would be incredibly willing to work during the summer if offered... However, she was very understanding and told me that we would spend this semester with me learning as much as I physically can about the work they do. She also reassured me that not being in town this summer would not impact any chance of continuing my work next fall, which was reassuring, because so far I really enjoy the work.

I’ve been informed that since the training required to run analytical samples is extensive enough to take up my entire internship, and since I won’t be available this summer to run analytical samples even if I was trained, I will be running primarily - if not exclusively - internal developmental samples. Not that this is a bad thing however, developmental measurements are taken throughout the entire campus so I’ll get a lot of incredibly varied training on different chemical instruments and what they’re used for.

This week, I got into the lab and was trained on how to take “Karl Fischer” water readings, which basically tell us what percentage of our solution is water. It does this by inserting a known amount of sample as well as a reagent in small amounts over time. This reagent reacts with water, and creates a chemical which does not conduct electricity - changing the potential difference of the solution, and this ΔV is detected by a set of electrodes. Over time, once there is no difference in mV despite the addition of reagent, it prints off the collected data and automatically calculates the percentage of water in the sample, as the lack of a change in mV indicates that the reagent is not reacting with the sample anymore, indicating a lack of water. Additionally, I was trained on how to run a LC sample, and while I’m familiar with the theory behind that instrument from Organic Chemistry, it was interesting to actually prepare my reference solution and my sample solution and actually run it myself. Starting to feel like a real chemist.

[futurefuelinternship]

Second Week

First of, likely a few, slightly late updates. This week I learned how to enter my hours worked and all my information to the automatic payroll system, and I’m currently getting the documentation to actually get paid. Having your passport and social security card be over 400 miles away is no fun, so it’ll probably be a little while until I get paid, but that’s not the important part of this internship - though it’s nice!

In regards to chemistry however, I haven’t gotten into the lab yet. Most of what I’ve done is read a bunch of SDS summary sheets for every process that the site runs, and honestly after a while they blur a little together, but important things stand out, like where they’re using Sulfuric Acid, chemicals that could be exposed during transfer/cleaning/etc, and more. I hope this information is never relevant to me, but I’m thankful that the training is so thorough. I should be able to finish my training early this week - I have a couple more SDSs to read, and then everything else is in-person as-available training, so I should be able to get in to the lab (finally) on tuesday. I’ll be heading in today in order to get as much as I possibly can finished. Here’s hoping my next update has some real chemistry in it!

[futurefuelinternship]

First Week

So, this week was my first week actually starting at Future Fuel. What I’ve done so far is:

Filled out all of my mandatory paperwork, except for my form to prove that I can work in the states.

Took all of my medical exams to prove that I am physically able to work

Met a few people in the Analytical Lab, and saw the floor that the lab is on, as well as the cafeteria and the fitness center

Got my ID and my Email Address

Started working on HR & safety training

While this week has been pretty productive, there hasn’t been much more going on than just getting through what I need to know before training. I also learned that training opens at 6:30AM every day, so I’m going to try to head in early MWF next week, to knock out as much of this as I can, and have time to take breaks so the information doesn’t just go in one ear and out the other.

For the most part, all I’ve learned is that I definitely need to be very aware of the dangers of the chemicals we’ll be working with, because a lot of them (that I’ve been trained about) are incredibly dangerous. I may start keeping the relevant training documents about these chemicals in my binder, so that I have it on hand to review and know before there is an emergency. I’m excited to get in the lab and learn what I’ll be doing specifically though - I have a hunch that I’ll enjoy this even more than my REU program.

[futurefuelinternship]

Fake Update

So, this is somewhat of a placeholder update, but I didn’t want to send Dr. Grafton a link to a blank site. Here goes nothing!

This week I got back onto campus, finished winter RA training, started up my classes, and contacted Future Fuel to set up my first time to come in. My first shift will be Tuesday, 1/22/19, and I’ll be doing safety training and learning about the analytical lab. They told me that it will be a while before I can come in on weekends, but I was anticipating that. I’ll likely be really busy on Tuesdays for a while.

At this point, I’m feeling both excited to get started and anxious to find out what I’ll be doing. My schedule is somewhat intense this semester, with me taking Intermediate French, Advanced Electricity and Magnetism, OChem II, Foundations of Modern Math, and trying to prep for the LSAT on top of all that, but I’m relentlessly hopeful that I can do it. (And even if I can’t, I’ll be able to retake the LSAT for free since I’m taking the July version.) I’ve never been one to back away from a challenge, and I don’t intend to start now.

I definitely need to invest in a better alarm clock and planner though.