Caitlin

Day 8: Sand and Goodbye :(

Today consisted of a visit from Ms. Follet, finishing TKN samples, playing with a research sandbox, and transferring fecal coliform. The TKN samples caused a few issues: the samples needed to be diluted, but the base wouldn’t properly set, and settings had to be adjusted. Fortunately, by ~3 everything was fixed, and the report was completed.

Dr. Reed set up an augmented reality sandbox (originally designed by someone at UC Davis) that projects a topographical map over the sand. He let me play around with it for a few minutes and described the overall concept and its uses. The sand was a bit sparkly and created super pretty islands with lots of colors! I think this was one of the highlights of my experience and I had a fun time playing around with it.

The day ended with helping Ms. Mackenzie count and transfer fecal coliform colonies. Since yesterday the colonies grew and made little blue dots on the dish. We scraped those off with a small hook and put them in test tubes. Tomorrow Ms. Mackenzie will see if the bacteria is actually fecal coliform or something else by seeing if the tubes produced a gas.

It was sad to leave the CAAE because I thoroughly enjoyed my time there. Everyone was so welcoming and willing to share their knowledge with me! Ms. Mackenzie treated me to lunch and they gave me a cute water bottle!

Day 7: Algae and Pig Farming

In the morning I worked with Elle and talked to her about different types of harmful algae. She was specifically working with Pfiesteria (algae that can be toxic and lead to fish kills) and let me see them under a microscope. She had samples from various locations in North Carolina as well as a few from New Zealand. After that, I helped her feed the algae and learned a lot about writing research reports and her old projects. Elle formerly worked on a project about using algae as a biofuel, which I found incredibly interesting. I also got a refresher on types of microscopes (since 9th grade I’ve forgotten a lot of biology haha). Some of the pictures below are ones she took while doing her various research projects.

Ms. Mackenzie and I went back to the Cary Wastewater treatment plant to pick up a sample of their inflow. It was a brief visit, but it was nice seeing one of the lab analysts for their lab (they weren’t there on the tour). Towards the end of my day, I watched Ms. Mackenzie do a test for fecal coliform (it involves pretty red and blue solutions).

I also had the privilege to speak with Dr. JoAnn Burkholder for about an hour. She gave me a brief presentation about water quality in North Carolina and how government policy is needed to genuinely improve it. North Carolina is one of the top pig farming states and is also competitive in the poultry industry; thus making animal waste a big issue. Due to a lack of regulations, this waste is often carelessly disposed of and negatively impacts communities and waterways surrounding the farms.

Image 1: Sample from water treatment plant

Image 2: Pfiesteria in bottles (pink coloring is because of their food)

Image 3: Fecal coliform test

Image 4: Pfiesteria piscicida zoospore (in the bottles)

Image 5: “Angry face anabaena” – Anabaena planctonica (picture from one of Elle’s previous projects)

Day 6: Counting!

Most of today was spent doing paperwork and helping Nicole (one of the Ph.D. students). She is currently doing a project where she counts the number of Phytoplankton in various water samples. She introduces multiple nutrients to the samples and sees how their presence affects the colonies/population of the Phytoplankton. When I toured the lab before DT, she was in the lab counting the plankton through a microscope. Her project is supposed to last for two summers and two winters, and she is currently halfway through. My job was to help her tally up the numbers on her data sheets. Combined it took us about 3 hours, and I’m just hoping I didn’t mess up the math somewhere along the way.

The rest of the time I worked on the projects from yesterday and helping Ms. Mackenzie work on more Kjeldahl nitrogen tests. She let me be more involved and do a lot of the pipetting (I’ve improved since yesterday yay). As for my organization projects, I got through the NH3 and Nitrate spreadsheets/reports

Image 1 & 2: Nicole’s Tally sheets (I did the furthest right columns & there are probably a bunch of math errors haha)

Image 3: spinning test tubes for the nitrogen test

Day 5: Kjeldahl ?

In the morning, Ms. Mackenzie and I worked on one of the most tedious tests in the lab: total Kjeldahl nitrogen (basically, all the nitrogen in the sample). The first step in the process turns all the nitrogen in the sample into NH3 by using a mercuric oxide. I labeled the test tubes and added a bunch of purified water and then added five mL of the mercuric oxide. The water samples are preserved in sulfuric acid already, so the test tube contents end up being highly acidic. The test tubes are then placed on this cool stirrer thing, which spins them around super fast to mix it. It is then all heated for about 4 hours at approximately 280 degrees C. At the end of this process there was barely any liquid left in the sample (around ⅕ of the original), and more water was added.

In the afternoon, Ms. Mackenzie had me do a few projects involving lots of paper and organization. She gave me a spreadsheet and had me type in all the “blanks” (test run and their corresponding values. I also organized a few binders and worked with even more stickers.

Image 1: test tubes (white things are boiling rocks)

Image 2: The spinning thing and all the test tubes

Day 4- Chlorophyll and E Coli

I shadowed Jenny today and helped her vacuum filter chlorophyll out of water samples from Falls Lake. The process was the same as what I did on day two with total suspended solids (TSS), but it had to be done under a special green light. While she was filtering everything I wrote down the results and handed her the sample bottles.

(The 300+ stickers I cut yesterday were used in this process & I cut around 80 more today)

I also met their data manager, Carol, and she talked to me about how she runs the website and creates all the spreadsheets/graphs for their research projects. She uses a program called Surfer to make most of the graphs and her data sheets typically run between 15,000-60,000 rows (per graph). The data she collects comes from on site probes, and they currently have probes on Falls Lake and in High Point.

In the afternoon I watched Lisa work with cultivating e coli samples for one of the other people in the lab. Each week the lab cultivates another e coli dish and keeps it in a refrigerator so further tests can be done. The e coli is grown on some processed sheep blood which I found pretty cool. (It smelled horrible)

Image 1: Vacuum filter

Image 2: One of the Graphs Karen made

Image 3: Excel sheet for the graph

Image 4: E Coli sample

Day 3- NH3 and Stickers

Despite the background check obstacle, I shadowed Ms. Mackenzie today instead of Lisa. I started off the day putting stickers on cups for storm water samples, then I proceeded to cutting off stickers from 200+ filters so they could be recycled. I also watched her make the buffer solutions and other reagents for one of the machines.

The rest of the day I worked with her and tested for NH3 in various water samples. Each sample took around 90 seconds to process and there were ~120 samples to do. The samples are put into little glass jars and a probe comes to extract some of the water. The water then goes through a bunch of tubes and the NH3 is measured at a wavelength of 660 nm (absorption test). My job was to write down how many micrograms/L of NH3 were in each sample. She taught me how to work the program (AACE and QuAAtro) and had me input titles for some of the samples.

Going along with my other post, I found out that Ms. Mackenzie also has a favorite type of pen (staples postscript .7 mm).

Image 1: NH3 Machine

Image 2: Computer & lab sheet

Image 3: My pile of stickers and filters

Day 2- Safety and Vacuuming

I spent my first day at the North Carolina Center for Applied Aquatic Ecology (NCCAAE) with Elle and Lisa. My safety training consisted of signing 3 forms and a tour around the facility: Elle pointed out every eye wash, shower, fire alarm, and exit in the building. NC State has a new policy about background checks, and the HR department is making everybody get one since I’m under 18. As a result, my next few days will be spent with Lisa (she’s new so she has an updated background check).

Lisa and I worked with recent storm water samples from the Neuse River and ran tests for total suspended solids. The tests consisted of pouring the water into a vacuum filter until at least 2.5 mg of solid was on the filter. The filters were then dried in an oven for an hour to remove the excess water. Lisa had me mass the samples and input the data into a spreadsheet.

The vacuum filtration process was quite tedious, each bottle was ~1 liter and she had about 9 bottles to go filter. Some of the samples took longer than others, and one of the samples had a few worms in the bottom. Though the worms were interesting, Lisa had to redo the filtration. While the filter was running, I asked her about her path into the profession/field. Basically she said that she hated science in high school (except for Environmental Science) and then ended up liking chemistry in college. Before working at NCCAAE she worked for several nonprofits and has found that she likes working in jobs with a hands on/direct impact on the environment.

IMAGE 1: Scale and Data sheet I filled out (scale worked to the 100,000th of a gram)

IMAGE 2: One of the vacuum filters after it was dried

(On an unrelated note, I found that Lisa and I are both picky about our pens, and we had a nice discussion about them after I complimented one of hers. She used a Uniball Laserjet .7 mm blue pen and it wrote quite nicely.)

Day 1- Touring a Cary Water Treatment Plant

Today I toured the Cary Wastewater Treatment Plant. The facility is not too far away from CA and is surrounded by trees. My tour guides were named Jonathan and Joe: Jonathan was a chemist and Joe had a degree in forestry. I asked both of them why/how they ended up working in the wastewater industry, and both of them agreed that it was an under-publicized profession and they just found their way into it. Joe specifically said he chose it due to it being economically stable, while Jonathan said he first learned about the industry in a college class. Joe and Jonathan had many stories about the plant, for example, they used to have a pet duck who would run around the plant and try to get food from the workers. There are “17.75” people employed at the plant (the ¾ of a person works part time) and the facility is running 24/7. This treatment plant handles wastewater from Lake Crabtree and supplies water to parts of RTP and the RDU airport.

The water treatment process at this location (and what Jonathan says “like 99% of other plants” do) uses microorganisms instead of chemicals to treat the water. The facility focuses on lowering phosphorus and nitrogen levels in the water, as well as adding dissolved oxygen to the water. The entire process lasts around 48 hours, and the plant treats around 7 million gallons per day on average.

The last part of my visit interested me the most because they showed me the disposal of the microorganisms. The microorganisms might overpopulate the water and cause issues for the rest of the process, so some of them are flushed out of the tanks and disposed of. They are then killed using a UV light and made into a sludge (that is later used and sold as fertilizer). It turns out one of the biggest buyers of this fertilizer is a christmas tree farm.

Tomorrow I will be starting at the North Carolina Center for Applied Aquatic Ecology and I will be getting my safety training. My contact there, Ms. Mackenzie, gave me some powerpoints and videos to watch that went along with my visit to the water treatment plant. I’m excited to learn more about water treatment and its environmental impacts.

IMAGE 1: Overview of facility taken from Admin Building
IMAGE 2: One of the nutrient removal tanks

IMAGE 3:One of the clarification tanks

IMAGE 4: Sludge water tank