Jared Quinn

Jared Quinn
About Me: Jared Quinn – Grade 7 Life Science – Overlook Middle School – Ashburnham Westminster Regional School District
I can confidently say that life does not happen in a straight line.  My path has quite a few turns in it.  The only constant I can see is that I have always wanted to teach. I spent my entire undergraduate teacher preparation program planning on being a 1st grade teacher. This changed when I was required to do a student teaching placement in grade 6. After experiencing all of the challenges that middle school students bring to the table I was hooked, and I have spent the last 26 years as a middle school teacher. I spent the first 12 years of my career teaching middle school science with a little math and reading sprinkled in. I then took a brief 11-year hiatus to develop and teach a middle school engineering technology program. Then three years ago I returned to a Grade 7 Life Science classroom, where I plan to stay for the remainder of my career.
About the Lab: Dr. Powell’s EMRG (Energy Metals Research Group) team is located in the historic Washburn Shops building on the beautiful campus of Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts. The EMRG’s vision is to serve society as a leader in practical applications for electrochemical technologies; to pioneer in enhanced transportation systems and industrial safety; to provide a catalyst for reduced manufacturing waste and energy consumption; and to be a key player in attaining a world with
     
Project Title: Magnesium Production and Recycling for Clean Energy 
Project Overview: The Magnesium Production and Recycling project is working towards reducing the energy required in the production of magnesium. The process happens in two distinct steps: electrolysis and distillation. During the electrolysis step magnesium oxide (MgO) is combined with a tin and magnesium mixture to create a 50-50 mixture of tin and magnesium. By heating the mixture to its melting point and running the electrolysis, a magnesium tin alloy will form around one electrode, and the impurities such as oxygen and salts will collect around the other electrode. The electrolysis on its own is a process in which an electrical current is run through electrodes connected to a solid, which can separate a mixture’s individual components (This is how water can be separated into hydrogen and oxygen). Distillation is the second step of the project.  Distillation involves melting down the magnesium tin alloy. When the magnesium in the alloy reaches its vaporization point, the magnesium separates from the tin due to tin having a higher vaporization point. The magnesium vapor rises into a condenser where it cools and returns to liquid form and eventually its solid form. The solid magnesium is then analyzed to assess for purity.
  Weekly Updates                                                                                                                                                                  Week 1:
  • The first week of RET has been a whirlwind. We started off by familiarizing ourselves with the program as a whole, met with our faculty mentors, toured the beautiful campus, and completing our lab safety training.
  • By the second day of the program, we had jumped in with both feet. Dr. Adam Powell and Ph.D. student Daniel McArthur Sehar have welcomed us to the group and have gone out of their way to make us feel comfortable and part of the team. Daniel has spent quite a bit of time explaining the intricacies of the project and bringing us up to speed with the research.
  • Our third day was spent in the lab running one of the 18″ box furnaces at 700° C to melt and remove magnesium residue from the condenser portion of the magnesium extraction rig. Our concern with this process is that, due to the magnesium being exposed to the air for multiple days, it may have built up a layer of oxidation.  The oxidation would prevent the magnesium from melting at 700°C, requiring nearly 1600°C to melt. If we are unable to remove the remaining magnesium from the extraction rig, we will need to have a new one fabricated, and this can take weeks.
  • Day four started with checking on the melt, and it was a success! We were able to remove the remaining magnesium from the condensing chamber. With the condenser now empty we were able to prepare the Magnesium Distillation Rig and bring it to the machine shop.  The machine shop will weld the two parts of the rig together and add the vacuum tube. Unfortunately, we are now at a standstill as we wait for the machine shop to complete the welding. Fingers crossed, we will be able to run the magnesium distillation in the middle of next week.
Week 2:
  • The second week of RET has been just as busy, and wonderful, as week one.  Monday started out in the lab with what I thought would be a slow morning.  We were in a holding pattern as we waited for the machine shop to weld the Distillation Rig. The more exposure I get with science research, the more I realize it is a “Hurry up and wait” situation. With the expected down time we have taken on a side quest.  The lab team has concerns of metals from the distillation rig leaching into the extracted magnesium during the distillation process. Nickel is of major concern because it causes corrosion within the magnesium, but contamination of other metals, such as Iron, is considered undesirable as well. It seems that our down time throughout the project will be spent on this side quest.
  • Tuesday began with an unexpected phone call from the machine shop letting us know the Distillation Rig was ready to go. A quick drive across town brough the Rig back to Washburn to begin preparations for our experiment. It is important to remember that science is never dull and often does not go smoothly.  As we began our preparations for the distillation experiment, we remembered that the required vacuum gage had not been ordered yet.  The distillation process requires the magnesium alloy to be heated to approximately 700°C, well beyond the ignition point of magnesium.  To prevent the magnesium from igniting, and blowing up the lab, the heating must be done in an environment deprived of oxygen. We are able to do this in one of two ways.  Option 1 fill the space with a Nobel gas, the issue with this is we are then adding another element to the mixture.  Option 2 remove the oxygen using a vacuum pump.  The additional benefit of the vacuum is that it will lower the melting and vaporization point of the magnesium. Because of the lead time, and other factors out of our control, we were looking an additional 3-4 days of delays. Another trip across town on a scavenger hunt from company to company eventually resulted in us finding exactly what we needed, a vacuum gauge that will allow us to keep track of the vacuum inside the Distillation rig throughout the experiment.
  • Wednesday began with a simple, but very important, vacuum test to ensure no oxygen can enter the Distillation Rig during tomorrow’s experiment.  Once we were confident with the vacuum, we prepared the Distillation Rig for tomorrow.  The rig is coated with a boron spray to prevent the long-term breakdown of the rig due to the heat from the furnace.  The rig is then moved into the 18″ box furnace, we attached the vacuum pump, 4 thermocouples to collect data throughout the experiment, and then closed off with the top of the furnace with insulation.
  • Thursday of this week, Thursday, was a long research day.  Daniel, the PhD. student that has been showing us the way through our research came in early to start the gradual furnace ramp up. By the time I arrived in the lab the furnace was already at 170°C. Throughout the day we needed to regularly redraw the vacuum to remove any organic gasses that may have been released from the weld locations as well correct for any fluctuations due to the high levels of heat. By 12:30 the furnace had reached 900°C, the temperatures had plateaued, we pulled one final vacuum, and the distillation of magnesium had begun. We continued to monitor the furnace temperatures and the vacuum for the next few hours, looking for a sign that the distillation process was over. By 4:00 the distillation was over.  We shut down the furnace to let everything cool slowly over night and went home, eagerly awaiting Friday afternoon, when we get to see the results.
  • Much of Friday morning was spent on a wonderful tour of the Polar bottling plant.  Apon returning to campus we hurried back to the lab to check on our results. The first step in checking our results required us to cut open the evaporator portion of the Distillation Rig using the horizontal bandsaw.  Inside the evaporator we were immediately able to see magnesium crystals in the passageway to the condenser.  These crystals were a telling sign that the magnesium was able to vaporize.  The next step in our experiment would be to remove and analyze the composition of the tin from the evaporator and to melt the magnesium out of the condenser and analyze its composition as well.  Unfortunately, we were unable to get the tin out of the crucible to analyze its composition. This roadblock brought Friday to a close on a lower note than the week started off with. Throughout the week we were able to make a little progress on our side quest. Although the paper research continues with a fair amount of frustration, we decided to step away and run an experiment to test the level of materials leaching into the magnesium during the distillation process. During the down time during Thursday’s magnesium distillation, we were able to prepare our materials.  This involved cutting 2 gram pieces of 310, 304, and a high alloy steel.  We also cut 5 gram pieces of purified magnesium.  The experiment will melt the magnesium in the crucible with each of the pieces of steel.  We can then measure how much, if any, of the steel leached into the magnesium during the melt.
Week 3:
  • This week began with a lab meeting with Dr. Powell.  Each of the lab members shared what has been taking place with their research and were they were in submitting papers for publication. Dr. Powell graciously invited us to be part of the lab field trip to Canada this August as well as joining the group lunches on Fridays and being part of the lab dinner at his house in a couple weeks. Dr. Powell and his team have fostered a welcoming and inclusive environment from day 1. In the lab we needed to make a decision about the best way of removing the tin from the crucible. We decided to drill a hole through the middle of the tin, being careful to monitor the temperature and to collect the metal shaving being produced, then we threaded a bolt into the tin and tried to use a hammer to force it out of the crucible.  Unfortunately, this did not work so we smashed the crucible with the hammer. Once we had the tin we were able to cut it into 2 pieces revealing the inside.  This inside was sanded flat and then analyzed using the SPARK testing machine to find the chemical makeup of our sample.  It seems that we may need to retest the sample using a different model as the results show that the sample is 99% magnesium. The original set up used 60% tin and 40% magnesium.
  • Tuesday was spent further to analyzing the sample we removed from the crucible yesterday. Although we are still not 100% confident in the data, as other elements that should not be present are showing up on the scans, we were able to deduce that the Magnesium did not completely distill from the tin and it is found in higher concentrations at the top of the sample. At the bottom of the sample, we have 38% magnesium and 41% tin, in the middle of the sample we had 51% magnesium and 30% tin, and at the top of the sample we had 74% magnesium and 24% tin. After debriefing the data with Dr. Powell, our current thought is that the tin’s affinity for the magnesium slowed the release of the magnesium during the distillation. In future trials, Daniel will extend the amount of time for the distillation to allow for a slower evaporation of magnesium due to the tin’s affinity.  We believe that as the liquid alloy cooled the tin solidified first and settled to the bottom due to its higher density.  The slower solidification and the lower density of the magnesium caused a higher concentration of magnesium towards the top of our sample. This can be seen in the optical microscopy images, with the blueish material being the tin and the gray being the magnesium.
  • Our time in the lab is working towards the experimental question, “Is it possible to extract adequate amounts of purified magnesium from a salt solution?” To answer this question, we have broken our research into two parts. The first part is using electrolysis to pull a tin/magnesium alloy out of a salt mixture.  The second part is distilling the tin/magnesium alloy to remove the magnesium.  Up to this point we have been working with the second part.  Today we started on electrolysis. We spent the majority of our day setting up the electrolysis experiment that is scheduled to run on Friday.  We combined 3 salts (magnesium oxide, magnesium fluoride, and calcium fluoride) to simulate the waste product from water desalinization plants. We added the uniformly mixed salts to 300grams of tin and placed it in a large crucible.  The crucible was then put into a metal frame, insulated to prevent any metal conductivity and then we installed the graphite and the tungsten rods.  The entire rig was then paced in the 18″ furnace.
  • Our lab time on Thursday was spent finishing the experiment preparations.  We needed to test the argon system to ensure oxygen does not react with the experiment.  Unfortunately, the flow meter was not working correctly which left us with no way of controlling the flow of argon gas into the furnace.  We found a work around by cannibalizing a flow meter from another project. We spent quite a bit of time calculating the furnace temperatures and timeline and then learned how to program the furnace to follow the temperature changes and experiment timelines. Our plan is that at 7:00 pm we will start the program.  The furnace will hold at 0°c until 4:00 am. At 4:00 am the furnace will ramp up to 400c at a rate of 10°c per minute and then hold at 400°c until 10:40 am. At 10:40 am the furnace will then ramp up to 1150°c at a rate of 10°c per minute.  The furnace will stay at 1150°c for the duration of the experiment.
  • Friday was an early start.  We had to be at the lab by 7:30 am to ensure we were able to turn the argon gas on at 7:40 when the temperature was scheduled to increase.  Unfortunately, the program stopped running during the night and we had to resort to operating the furnace manually. Daniel started the initial ramp up to 400°c at 6:30 am.  Because of the delay we had to increase the ramp up rate to 15°c per minute. We reached 400°c by 7:00.  We manually adjusted the furnace to maintain the 400°c for 2 hours.  At 9:00 we started another quick ramp up in temperature, again using 15°c per minute as our target. We reached 1150°c by 1:00 pm and began the electrolysis.  In the experiment we connected the negative terminal to the graphite rod and the positive terminal to the tungsten rod we made sure the tungsten rod was deep enough to connect with the molten tin and the graphite rod was in the molten salt layer. For the electrolysis we conducted a voltage sweep from 0-5 volts increasing by 0.5 volts every 12 seconds.  This was followed by a 5 minute OCD hold to allow the residual voltage in the tungsten and graphite to drop.  After the OCD hold we did a 1 volt electrolysis for 1 hour to remove the impurities.  We then conducted another sweep and OCD hold, followed by a 2 hour 3-volt electrolysis to pull the magnesium out of the molten salts to create a tin-magnesium alloy.  After the electrolysis, we shut the furnace down and went home after a long 12 hour day.
  Week 4:
  • Our lab time on Monday was spent trying to analyze the results of Fridays Electrolysis. When we removed the sample from the crucible we could see the tin layer under the hardened salts.  We sanded the bottom of the tin and tried to ren the spark test on it, but we were unable to complete the testing.  We then ran the spectrum analysis on the bottom of the tin.  No magnesium was present as having alloyed with the tin.  We the separated the tin from the salts and ran the analysis again on the top of the tin layer, but we received the same results.
  • We used Tuesday morning to prepare for another run of the experiment.  We will conduct the same experiment, but this time we will use 1000g of tin instead of 300g. The thought being that we did not create the alloy because the tungsten may not have made a good connection with the tin due to low contact area. One issue we ran into with setting up the experiment was that we did not have a replacement gasket for the furnace.  After a quick problem solving session we decided to use a high heat automotive silicone that will make a gasket. fingers crossed that it will hold up to the heat of the furnace. After preparing the rest of the experiment to run on Wednesday, we met with Professor Powell and Daniel to review the data we collected with the datalogger.  Based on the Voltage graphs, Professor Powell believes we were able to pull some magnesium out of the salts with the electrolysis.  Unfortunately, we cannot find the magnesium anywhere.  One possible location was suspended in the salts.  While separating the salt and the tin we noticed some metals were suspended in the salt layer, so we went back to the salts and removed the metal pieces.  We tested their composition we found that they were identical to the tin found at the bottom of the crucible.  The missing magnesium may stay a mystery.
  • Wednesday, we did not run the entire experiment.  Due to time constraints and meetings, we decided to break the experiment into two days.  Wednesday, we did the 400°c prebake and on Thursday we will do the electrolysis.  Running the prebake was a little nerve racking as it was the first time we ran the furnace on our own.  It did not go smoothly, but in the end it all worked out.
  • Thursday started out with us double checking the electrolysis set up, followed by engaging the furnace program that Daniel created on Monday afternoon.  The furnace was set to ramp up to 1150c over the course of 2 hours.  We reached the 1150°c internal temperature at 1:00 pm. The furnace then held the 1150°c temperature for the duration of the electrolysis. The electrolysis process that we followed was identical to the last experiment. We conducted a 5-minute voltage sweep at .5 volts every 12 seconds.  We then did a 5-minute OCD hold to discharge any remaining voltage. This was followed by a 1-hour 1-volt electrolysis to remove any of the impurities in the salts. The sweep and OCD hold were completed again, followed by a 2-hour 3-volt electrolysis to pull the magnesium out of the molten salts.  The experiment ended with a final sweep and OCD hold.  At this point we turned the furnace off and let it cool until Friday morning.
  • When we arrived in the lab first thing Friday morning, we realized that the Argon tank had emptied overnight.  I know we did everything we were supposed to do before we left Thursday night, including leaving the argon on at a low flow rate to ensure an oxygen free environment as the furnace cooled down. The furnace was still at 87°c so we were unable to check our sample, it will have to wait until Monday morning.
Week 5:
  • Monday was a difficult start to the week.  When we opened the furnace, we realized that one of the insulation tubes that are designed to prevent any electrical short circuit during electrolysis, fell into the molten salts and tin as we closed down on Thursday night. We do not believe that it contaminated the sample, but we had a difficult time removing it from the solidified salts and tin.  One of the thermocouples also was trapped in the hardened salt, but this was easier to remove. We were able to sit with Dr. Powell to go through the data we collected during the electrolysis.  We know our temperature was well withing the temperatures noted in the phase diagram. When we analyzed the voltage data collected, we could see that our sweeps and OCV steps were exactly as we had expected.  The first electrolysis stage is at 1 volt for three minutes; this removes the impurities in the salt.  This also appeared as we had expected.  The second electrolysis runs for 2 hours at three volts.  This step also ran as expected and based on the amp hours we should have collected .5g of magnesium in the tin.
  • On Tuesday we were able to gain access to the XRF scanner to test the makeup of our sample.  Unfortunately, no magnesium could be identified within the tin. This left us wondering where the tin could have disappeared to.  We decided to test the two distinct salt layers. The deeper whiter colored layer had no trace of magnesium.  The top gray colored layer showed as 25% magnesium, 22% calcium, and 50% light elements. I guess we figured out where the magnesium has been going.
  • Wednesday was a short day for me.  We met as a group for our weekly professional development surrounding our lesson development.  When the meeting ended, I was able to use some of the extra time I collected with the extra-long experiment days to leave a little early. The RET experience is fantastic, but having an early day went a long way to recharge my internal battery.
  • Thursday was used to finish the first draft of the research poster.  We were able to share the poster with Dr. Powell and make the suggested changes.  At this point, our poster is ready for printing.
  • Friday morning started with a virtual meeting with Dr. Powell to discuss the results of our recent experiment.  The concern about magnesium not alloying with the tin is mildly concerning.  The running theory is that the magnesium did alloy with the tin, but the levels a too low to be detected by the XRF. We are hoping to arrange time next week to use the SEM to test the makeup.
Week 6:
  • This week
  Final Poster:   Lesson Plan: