The orientation at Rice University was a fantastic experience we met other interns, program directors and the city as well. We participated on group activities and introduced ourselves. I met people from other countries and learned funny facts about them. We visited the Toyota Center Stadium and parks around the area to know more about the city. This program is well organized, they gave us everything on time to enjoy our stay in Houston. I enjoyed much my visit to Houston and learned much whit this trip.
On my first three days on the lab I met Oluwaseye, a cool guy who is a PhD student. He knows a lot about chemistry and experiments regarding water treatment and desalination methods. I have been trying to understand the experiment we are planning to test next week; every day makes more sense to me because I was not used to lab experiments daily. Seye is a great mentor, he is doing his best to teach me how the project works. I always try to learn something from him and have a better understanding of the project.
I learned this project is about creating a multicell CDI reactor, which works with two porous carbon electrodes which absorb the ions from the Na, Ca, K etc. The conductivity and voltage applied can be represented with a table in where the conductivity will be decreasing until there are no more ions the carbons can absorb.
We sent the prototype to the machine shop on Thursday with all the measurements and cuts we needed. The next step will be to buy the materials we need to test the reactor next week and start getting results.
Here are some pictures I took from the lab and the workshop for the CDI multicell capacitor dimensions.
Uriel (UTEP), Darya (Rice), Elisabeth (Rice), Dianne (ASU), Carlos (ASU), Janice (ASU), William (Rice), Tahimy (Rice), Edgar (UTEP), Ifeoluwa (Rice), Oscar (UTEP)
