On Monday, Mrs. Westover was able to visit the class and observe our progress in the project. She sat through our presentations and asked necessary questions. Her visit was very insightful because it provided assurance for some designs and she also brought up new concerns to consider.
Below is a summary of our presentations to Mrs. Westover and her inputs:
Software
Chlorella Hardware:
Chlamy Hardware:
Science:
Below is a summary of our presentations to Mrs. Westover and her inputs:
Software
- All the code has been written and is complete.
- A problem that we had was that the camera which is mounted on the NESI Board is too close to the bioreactor. We could only see one and a half quadrants at a time. To solve this, we modified the code to rotate four times so that we can take individual pictures of each quadrant.
- Mrs. Westover's comments: We need to be prepared for a power outage on the ISS. We need to ensure the code does what we want once the power supply resumes. Also, we may have limited access or no access at all to downlinking data from the ISS during the experiment. If not available, we would have to collect the data post-experiment via the SD card. Mrs. Westover said that she will ask Nanoracks about this.
Chlorella Hardware:
- The team is planning to spin the bioreactor for 1 minute, every 30 minutes. This will be limited only to "daytime" (when the lights are on). Each day is 12 hours.
- After much gearing research and calculations, our bioreactor gearing ratio has been determined. The ratio from the smaller gears on the roller to the larger gears on the bioreactor is 1:3.2.
Chlamy Hardware:
- The students have designed a frame mount for the bioreactor that fits in the bottom of the cube. This will allow us to mount the bioreactor into the box without gluing and will allow us to easily remove the bioreactor if needed.
- The team also modified their gearing so it is more smooth and produces minimal friction.
- After discovering that the hydrogen-producing tape works in the solution, we will no longer need a gas-permeable membrane to separate the hydrogen and the solution. Thus, we are modifying the design to remove the inner chamber which was intended for the collection of hydrogen.
- We have been using plastic pins in order to connect the rollers to the inner box. However, those pins consistently broke. In response, we are replacing the plastic pins with metal. We only need to make minor dimension changes to accommodate the change in pins.
- Mrs. Westover's comments: We need to leave some slack in the wire so that the soldering points don't break when the cube gets jostled.
Science:
- Our recent refrigeration test proved to be an immense success. All 6 tests produced hydrogen for chlamy.
- Another experiment conducted was the One-Light experiment, where only one LED light was lit in a dark, sealed container. The chlamy algae survived while the chlorella algae died.
- We are currently conducting an Eight-Light experiment to simulate the transportation of the algae to the ISS.
- Finally, the science team measured the magnetic fields of our potential motors from various angle. Those pictures will soon be uploaded to the sire