Wrap Up

Best of luck to the Uni High Inventor's Club in future endeavors.

They went to Boston and presented their design and have wrapped up the Inventor's Club Project for the time being.

I think it would be nice if the Independence Junior College students could post some of their pictures from the intern experience.

Shrimp ecocertification work will continue through 2010 and 2011.

Keep an eye on the Happy Anachronism for updates on work there!

Feeding trials continue

Trials are continuing here in Belize.  We are making a direct comparison of early post larval shrimp growth (1,200 per tank @ 25/m2) and survival when fed on AquaMats that are colonized by normal growth vs. allowed to trap suspended sediment in the control structures.  The picture above shows the AquaMats in the control structure (front) and being colonized in still water (rear).  The mats in the control structure fill with algae in a few minutes.  If the shrimp will eat that material and a low cost harvest technique can be found, they can remove a significant proportion of the algae leaving the pond (which is also a significant proportion of the nutrients leaving the pond).  The Uni High prototype could be installed in a similar manner.  We'll project findings from this experiment onto the Uni High findings to estimate yeild and potential viability of strained food sources as feed.  AquaMats are already a known viable food source.

Feeding Trials!

The huge experimental tanks in this picture are being filled as I type this. By the end of the week, we'll be ready to begin feeding trials for shrimp post larvae.

NEED A PROTOTYPE DESIGN!

If logistics are prohibitive, we can just move ahead with Aquamats but it would be nice to get some information from the exact device the club is going to present in Boston.



Inar and I will be running the trials. The interns had a good experience learning water quality etc, but time has run out on their semester.

Hope everyone is having a great spring!

Send us what you can!

Testing Plan

We want to estimate the growth curve for the purpose of:

1. Having some hard data proving that our material actually promotes growth

2. Estimating the growth curve on our belt design to determine optimal frequency of harvesting

This test being done in Illinois as well as Belize is helpful because Illinois testing will serve as a template for Belize testing: we can modify test design based on what did or did not work, and have an estimate of what the curve will look like (i.e. how long the exponential phase of growh is in comparison to the stationary phase). It will also be interesting to compare how the apparatus will grow algae in different environments.

(Typical growth curve for Tetraselmis suecica.We expect a similarly shaped curve, but our scaling will be slightly different. Source:http://www.fao.org/docrep/007/y5720e/y5720e08.htm)

Some basics about the test:

Algae harvest will be done using a single nail brush, not a harvesting mechanism (why? 1. our belt design was ready before the harvester is ready, 2. we don't want to be able to attribute error to inconsistency in harvest. this is a growth test, not a system test)

The data we aim for is actually a graph [img]. We'll be plotting grams of dry mass per square centimeters of belt against elapsed time (since last harvest) . Collection will occur at two day intervals at roughly the same time (in the morning). We divide the belt up into ten sections from which we harvest at scheduled intervals (so that our data will be spread out evenly).

Testing time is continuous. Although we will have the minimum useful data set by April 16th, we plan to either continue testing or launch a new round of testing using the harvester we eventually plan to implement.

At each harvest time:

0. Weigh watch glasses

1. Collect from the sections appointed for the day using a nail brush. Collect entire wet mass in a watch glass. Record having harvested.

2. Situation 1: We are allowed to bring home electronic balance. We allow the wet mass to sun dry, and if that isn't possible, we bake the material. Either way, we end up with dry material, and measure the mass (subtracting the watch glass weight). Situation 2: We (carefully) bring the watch glasses into school, bake in the oven in the chem room, and measure dry mass (subtracting the watch glass weight).

3. Record on paper and excel. The excel document will create the graph.

Flaws:

This data is only useful for static water (as opposed to implementation near the control section with accelerated mass collection).

Imprecise. Continuous testing is impossible, human error unlikely but possible (inconsistent harvesting?)

Prototype testing in Illinois

Hello everyone! It looks like good progress is being made in Belize. I look forward to the results of the most recent installment.

Outdoor prototype testing has begun recently, and the weather has finally gotten warmer for good it seems. We took a pre-existing design and altered it to work in a creek. This is what it looks like.

This design can be scaled to fit basically any size/shape pond. The belt is a double layered plastic embroidery sheet, with cheesecloth between the two sheets. The things that hold the belt in place, I'll call them belt guides, are PVC and come in two different forms. The first kind is a complete square, to enclose the belt. The second has two prongs to guide the belt. The second type is more efficient.

The belt has been in the water for about a week now, and this is what it looks like up close.

After March 16's post, Inventors Club is going try to incorporate these control structures, because it seems we could get a lot of yield from this. We would need some sort of efficient harvesting method. The harvester for this belt design is coming on 3/31. I'm not the expert on the harvester, so when it's implemented I'll post pictures and explanations. It uses rotating nail brushes to remove algae.

I look forward to hearing some feedback on this design!

The Interns Hit the Ponds!

Working under the direction of Inar Cayetano of Aquamar Shrimp Farm (on the left), Shamika Logan (middle) and Lisa Guttierez prepare and install AquaMats in a sedimentation pond to help trap additional nutrients and sediment.

Results will be posted soon.

Looking forward to meeting with the Uni High Inventor's Club soon to discuss progress!

Quick Lessons About Sedimentation Ponds

I'll try to make this brief and brilliant.

This is the control structure (dam) for a sedimentation pond. Shrimp farms use sedimentation ponds to trap water and let organic and inorganic particles "settle" to the bottom so they won't enter natural water ways. They are a good way to remove nutrients and they are where we plan to deploy the Inventor's Club invention to remove nutrients.

The control structure generally looks like some variation of the object above, with removable boards slid into slots in a concrete post holding back the water and creating the dam.

The water comes into the pond looking like this...

...and leaves the pond looking like this (much, much clearer).

And yesterday the water was that much clearer still, because we tried a little experiment with Aquamats. Inar Cayetano, the new environmental coordinator at Aquamar shrimp farm and myself, placed an Aquamat at the outflow of a control structure...and in SIXTEEN HOURS...on a completely clean Aquamat, we got THIS to grow....

Ladies and gentlemen...that is some serious biomass yield.

I'll try to post numbers soon.

While you are thinking about your designs, keep this little experiment in mind. This kind of yeild opens up some very efficient design possibilities.

New Interns!

Yesterday, five new interns from Independence Junior College met to discuss the upcoming projects for their environmental internships working to learn about and improve water quality at shrimp farms in Belize.

Along with learning to test water quality and implement mitigation projects, they will be helping to test the Uni High Inventor's Club water quality apparatus. From left to right the group includes Natasha Bennett, Rennee Cadle, teacher and intern sponsor Abigail Parham, Shamika Logan and Lisa Guttierez. Also working with the project but not pictured here is Omar Sierra.

Thanks to Uni High, and the Lemelson Foundation for the use of the waterproof camera (held by teacher Abigail just over Renee's right shoulder). The interns will use that to document their progress and keep us all appraised of their successes.

All interns will begin work next week. We're prepped and ready to go!

Progress!

Despite having neglected to post reports of our sucesses for a few months*, inventor’s club has been making plenty of advances. Our newfound funding from Lemilson-MIT was utilized to supply us with a grocery cart full of hardware store gems, from plastic sheets to squeegees to goldfish. Combined with the addition of three aquamats to our collection (thanks Belize!), we were finally ready to set up some more advanced tests.

We set up four fish tanks with filters, goldfish, and pondwater. The objectives of our experiments are to test the capacity of various materials for growth, to be able to compare different harvesting methods, and to have a tangible model of algal growth on substrates to spark creativity.

Meanwhile, members of our innovation/brainstorm group were exploring a few different concepts. We toyed with the idea of creating a quick method to apply silicon to substrates before emersion in the water to promote more growth. This was inspired by a closer reading of the aquamat manual, where it is recommended that the mats be soaked in chemicals for several hours before introduction into the shrimp ponds. Polluting the canals with excess silicate was one concern.

Another concept we discussed at length was the option of open water harvesting. From looking at any pond we know that diatom growth occurs without special substrates, and there are preexisting methods of controlling these (pond vacuums, skimmers, and enzymes for your neighborhood catchment). We looked into different ways to blow algae to the top (like a centrofuge effect). Another option would be a substrate that sort of functions as a net, growing algae near the bottom of the pond and then, when ready to harvest, catching the free water algae as it is pulled to the surface of the water.

Many design ideas were thrown around, written down. Other group members meanwhile played with the CAD modeling software. Their main success was to get a running model of a capped pipe with water flowing through it, which will be helpful when we want to put our virtual prototype in canal conditions. Those managing our finances handled receipts, and communicators/researchers contacted people from the geological survey.

After about two weeks of growth, we took the substrates out to see what we had grown. With the help of the school’s biology teacher, Mr. Stone, we used a microscope to observe the filamentous algae, and then discussed designs with him. Having grown lots of aquarium algae, Mr. Stone helped us bring together some components of previous designs for a new system that we are currently working to design, test, and improve. If we were to target one meeting as a “breakthrough”, it would be the one that Mr. Stone attended. More details on the latest design to come when I can get some photos of our model to help describe it.

As part of the grant requirements we are working on five videos about the project. As we’re producing storyboards and organizing filming, we realised that footage from Belize would aid our videos immensely. So, if anyone is in the mood to take a couple shots of canals, shrimp, ponds, people… Video team would be eternally grateful!

*Inventor’s club’s new years resolution: better communication.