Experiment Setup
Setup for the experment will begin at The
University of Washington. First we will prepare several 20 ml samples of
Palladium Chloride (PdCl2) and ethanol in a weak acid solution. These
samples will then be stored for transportation to Houston. Upon arrival to
Houston we will fill the sonocation chamber with our sample. The chamber
will then be fastened to the ultrasonic horn using an O-ring and steel
fasteners. A gas purge port will be used to remove the overhead air. The
chamber will also contain an electric thermometer connected to our lap top
and analyzed by the lab view program. This program will record the
temperature of our sample during the duration of our experiment. The
acoustic horn will heat our sample during it's operation. Our desired
operating temperature is 20 degrees Celsius, so we will be placing
chemical cooling packs within a coolant chamber around the sonocation
chamber in order to cool the sample down from any heating from the horn.
Since our proposed experiment is to test percent yield of nanoparticle
creation in micro gravity, our experiment will only be ran during the 20
seconds of reduced gravity. An accelerometer will connected to the lap top
and lab view will Lab view will give the ultrasonic horn power only while
in micro gravity. The lab view program will also record the duration of
which power will be given to the horn. This information will be used later
to mimic our experiment in a 1g environment.
The same sample will be used for both flights and analyzed back at the
university. We will then perform our experiment again at The University of
Washington in a 1 g environment. Our sample will again be analyzed and the
results from micro gravity will be compared to those of the 1g experiment.
The next process will discuss our analysis techniques in detail.
Once our experiment has been completed we will analyze the products back
at the University of Washington. The analysis will be done using the
technique of titration. During the formation of Pd nanoparticles Hydrogen
radicals formed within the bubble reduce Pd +2 ions in the solution
resulting in (Pd)n nanoparticles and hydronium (H+) ions. An acid base
titration will be used to detect the concentration of these hydronium
ions. This concentration of hydronium ions will be used to find the mass
of Pd +2 ions reduced to nanoparticles using the equation 2H + Pd(2+)->
nPd + 2H(+) . The same analysis will be done on the 1g sample and the
yields will be compared.