SRP – CA Work Experience Program

Day 5 @CAAE

This morning I was showed the results from the TSS samples I tested on last Thursday. From this, we learned that the lab duplicate that I made and tested had failed but was very close to passing. I was informed that it wasn’t how I did it and that it would have just been something in the water that caused a bigger difference in weight; for example, a small stick.

Then I was put to work in the lab. I threw out the old filter sheets, ordered the tins they were in, put them in the right spot in the drawer, took out 60 of those tins, then got 60 new filters. With those new filters, I washed them with deionized water and put them in the tins.

Once they were all put into the tins they were placed in the oven to get dried before they can get weighed before they can get used.

Once the filter sheets came out I weighed and recorded them on a data sheet.

To finish off the day, I worked with four SRP samples and the quAAtro machine. My results will come out tomorrow.

Day 4 @CAAE

The SRP samples analysis that I set up and ran yesterday on the quAAtro came out after we left yesterday. All of the initial setups that affect the rest of the run tested perfect and or right in the range of what they should be.

Today I was shown the process and set up for chlorophyll a filtration.

The process is similar to TSS filtering, in that you concentrate on a known volume of sample onto a filter sheet and use all the same materials. This process measures the amount of algal biomass in a water system. Chlorophyll a is a photosynthetic pigment found in plants and algae and has to be tested for in the dark with only green lights to illuminate without heat or bright lights that are usually on.

This is what the datasheet looks like for five samples taken from Oak Hollow and High Point reservoirs.

Day 3 @CAAE

The first thing we did was calibrate the scale, weigh the washed filter sheets, and weigh the baked filtered sheets with TSS on it.

This is the final compiled data after baking and weighing filter sheets with TSS from water taken from Falls Lake and Lake Wheeler, which we tested on Tuesday, May 28th.

We had 4 more samples of water from Lake wheeler that came in yesterday and we tested today. This test includes one daily dry filter, one filter solely filtered with water, one lab duplicate, and the 4 standard samples.

Taking a break to enter the data from Tuesday’s filtering, we went into Joy-Lynn’s cubical and she showed me her super cool ergonomic chair!

After lunch, endures the long process of writing down the layout of both stormwater and Neuse River SRP (orthophosphate) samples and typing them in for the auto-analyzer to run.