Week 1: Introduction

Hi Everyone, 

My name is Francisco. I am a a junior at Phoenix College.  This will be my third semester being in the STEM/TRAIN program here at Phoenix College.  This year, I am doing research at ASU West examining water quality with Beth Polidoro examining water quality from samples brought from the Philippines. I plan on doing study abroad or get to travel to different places to examine/provide date of contaminants in communities that are suffering with high contamination.

This summer I did a summer research program over at ASU West, I learned a lot about how to write cover letters, ask for recommendation letters, and how to network and approach new opportunities. It was a lot of fun and I got to learn more about what I want to study. This year I plan on learning more about water quality and gaining experience with this field.

Dehydration Process - One Step Closer

Hello guys,

I hope everyone's week has been busy and great! I came back to most of the micro plastics I extracted from the DI water to being completely dried out. I weighed each cup and wrote down my data. Once I did that, I had already poured some DI from last week so that way I can continue to extract the micro plastics.  I redid the process again but this time adding less DI water to each cup so that way the dehydration process wouldn't take as long as it did the last time. I extracted most of the micro plastics as I possibly could but there still remained some micro plastics in the sediment. :( I created a new set of rows of weighed out sediment so I can start extracting a new set of micro plastics using a Sodium Chloride solvent.

From my observations, I feel like DI water did a solid job with seperating the micro plastics from the sediment. That could be because of the density of DI water.

Next week I will reweigh the micro plastics once it has finished dehydrating. I will continue with extracting micro plastics from sediment using Sodium Chloride.

Week 9: Getting Close to Finishing Up!

Hi guys!

I am getting close to wrapping up my project, i'm sure we all are! All these conferences coming up may have us on the edge of our seats, but we got this! So far I have already let the micro plastics sit out so they can dry and be weighed out. So far I have gotten half of the micro plastics from the sediment and have seen great results from using DI water! Next week I will be using Salt Water to extract most of the micro plastics from the sediment. We will see which solvent works best!

Week 8!

Hello everyone! I finally got to extract most of the micro-plastics from the sediment. From my observations, plastic 5 and plastic 6 were the hardest to extract! It was a bit tedious, but manageable. I filled most of the samples #1-#30 with distilled water again so I can be capable of extracting most of the micro plastics that I can from the sediment. After doing that, I will be proceeding with extracting the micro plastics using salt water to extract it. So far, I am pretty satisfied with the results that I am seeing and cant wait to get onto extracting micro plastics and micro fibers from our tap water!
- Francisco

Week 6: Continuing Extraction of Microplastics!

Hello everyone,

I hope your week has been great! This week, I finished off with extracting as much micro plastics as I possibly could using a micro-pipette. I really thought this would be simple but I didn't realize how much time and tedious work this could be! I finished extracting as much plastic from plastic 2 classified as HDPE, a high-density polyethylene. Now I am to wait for the sediment to dry so I can continue with redoing the process again. I will continue tomorrow with extracting the rest of the micro-plastics from plastics 3-5, known as polyvinyl chloride, low-density polyethylene, polypropylene. Have a good spring break everyone!

- Francisco

Week 3!

Hello everyone,

This week started out a lot smoother then last week. I wasn't a 100% sure with what I was doing last week, but luckily Matt was there to save the day and refresh my brain. This week I ended up weighing out all the micro plastics (weighing it from 0.46-0.53 grams) first, then putting them into their designation sample cups that contained the sediments. Once I mixed the sediment and micro plastics together, I were to weigh it again and record data. I used distilled water to fill all the sample cups up to the rim and give about a week a two to see the separation of the plastics from the sediments.

Week Two: Getting started on project!

Hello again,

The end of last week, I was introduced by Marcus on his project he worked on last semester which was extracting micro-plastics from sediments. I'm glad he was able to help me get a head start on this project, so thank you Marcus! The plastic I would be working on is plastic #6 known as polystyrene. I am to fill cup sample #30 all the way up with diluted water and give it about a week or two for the separation to occur. In about a week or two I am to separate the plastic that has risen and transfer it over to a new cup to weigh the polystyrene by itself. Until next week! Lets see how this goes!