Hodor!

Happy Friday, everybody! It has been a tiring week although I don't know that anything out of the ordinary happened. Next week Anthony and I will be heading to Duluth to the Large Lakes Observatory to participate in a chief scientist training cruise (more on this next Friday). This last week I spent some time putting together all of our field work supplies. I think we are almost ready to go. But I certainly have to give some credit to our lab manager, Aurelie Dhenain, and our undergraduate students for their help in preparing. It is wonderful to have other people around to double check you, and to do all the little tasks. Thank you! On another note, yesterday two of our undergrads braved the Chippewa River and collected some more DOM samples. I think they had fun!

But the main subject of today's post is Hodor. Yes, I have now revealed myself as a big nerd--if you didn't know that already. Just for my own amusement, I named our glove box Hodor.

Trying to get a full view of the glove box. The room is very narrow so it's not easy to take photos. The gloves provide a way for the scientist to manipulate items inside the glove box (hence the name). This also means that the only dancing that can be done while working in the glove box is the Macarena. But the 90-degree turn is impossible.

You know what's coming: Hodor!

I spend a fair amount of time doing experiments in the glove box. A glove box is an enclosed chamber that maintains an atmosphere different from the ambient, or normal, atmosphere. Typically, researchers want to exclude oxygen and/or water, and in our case we have an anaerobic (oxygen-free) atmosphere. The atmosphere inside the glove box is a mixture of hydrogen and nitrogen. The gas analyzer is our main source of information about the maintenance of the glove box atmosphere.

The gas analyzer

Samples and equipment are moved in and out of the glove box through the airlock. The airlock goes through three cycles of vacuum followed by refilling with nitrogen before any materials are introduced into the glove box. This ensures that most of the oxygen from the atmosphere outside the glove box is removed before we open the door to the glove box chamber.

The airlock

Gas supply connected to the airlock

However, a small amount of oxygen will always enter the chamber, and it is the job of the catalyst inside the glove box to remove this oxygen. Inside the glove box are two more boxes containing a palladium catalyst. In the presence of hydrogen, the palladium reduces the oxygen to water, which is then retained on the catalyst, keeping an oxygen-free environment.

The glove box is useful for conducting experiments that simulate conditions on early Earth--when there was no oxygen in the atmosphere--and conditions in deeply buried, reducing sediments from lakes and the ocean.

See you next week in Minnesota!