Having made a new catalyst yesterday, I spent my last day in the lab testing the reactor. After a few warm up measurements (which would be used as calibration points later on) I measured the output of the reactor when receiving a mixture of 50% CO2 and 50% methane (CH4) and….there was a leak. One of the pipes (potentially the pipe that we had to refit onto the tube housing the reactor, since there was very little insulation, only a heat-fitted tightness keeping the gas in) was leaking air and preventing us from seeing any coherent data or testing the reactor to see if it was actually better than the old one. Since our flow meters also seemed to not be working properly, I had abandoned this task. Undoubtedly a poor way to finish the experience, but I enjoyed every experiment, measurement, and lesson I learned along the way.
