Meeting 29: 29 March 2023

Meeting Minutes

Date:  29 March 2023; 14:00 – 14:45 CT; via Zoom 

Attendees:  Gary Acton, Laurel Childress, Lisa Crowder, Emily Estes, Bill Gilhooly, David Houpt, Jennifer Hertzberg, Brad Julson, Leah LeVay, Chang Liu, Aaron Mechler, Eric Moortgat, Chieh Peng, Michelle Penkrot, Vinny Percuoco, Thomas Ronge, Jeff Ryan, Johanna Suhonen, Elizabeth Trembath-Reichert, Trevor Williams  


1) Porewater storage

- Concerns raised about long-term porewater storage and too much air in vials effecting analyses. This was discussed in the Curation LWG (see meeting minutes from 23 March 2023). 

- Technicians do generally work to limit headspace in remaining porewater sent to shore, however there are many factors that control this process, including requests from the science party, time, and supplies available onboard. It is also difficult to predict how much porewater will remain for any given sample, or to properly curate porewater for all potential types of future analysis.  

- Curation LWG recommends continuing to store porewater samples as requested by individual science parties. 




2) Expedition review: 398

Issue G149) request for additional squeezing station


Issue G150) software issue exporting mass to the coulometer software 

- This issue is the result of permission issues for shipboard accounts. 


Issue G151) higher resolution hard rock analytical tools 

- Scientist provided later clarification that an electron probe, XRF, and SEM with stable EDS detector are the requested equipment. 

- The pXRF is available shipboard, but was not used during Expedition 398. The newly installed SEM with EDS is still being tested shipboard, and the older SEM also remains on the vessel. It will not be possible to provide an electron probe on the ship. 


Issue G152) too many scientists on one shift in the chemistry lab 

- Staffing is very expedition specific, and sometimes two people in the chemistry lab is not enough to accomplish all of the work. Variability in core flow can also impact the workload on a shift.  


3) Other ongoing issues

- Discussions of microbiology destructive sampling from the November 2022 meeting were revisited. 

- TAS has looked at many presses online and found them to be either too big or no better than what we already have. Chieh will investigate the possibility of using the X-press anaerobically.

- A method and SOP for using the Dremel tool still needs to be developed. LO/ALO onboard during Expedition 399 will organize this. Jurie Kotze will possibly work on it.

- The Foldio imaging system still needs a page on the Wiki. Oscar Cavazos will do this during Expedition 399.


- Trouble with A/C in the rad van was re-checked onboard (Issue G143) 

- Technicians (Garrick) have been assessing both the air conditioners in the Radvan. There is a small air conditioning unit in the smaller room and a larger room with its own larger air conditioner. Both the air conditioning units are adjustable and will keep their temperature at the set point.

- We have run them for days at 20 degrees Celsius with no troubles. We then set them to 0 degrees Celsius for days and condensation formed on the small room door for two days, we then turned the temperature back up the 20 degrees Celsius and the setpoint was reached the next morning.

- Do note, the temperature in the small room is set in Fahrenheit and the larger room is set in Celsius.

- Also, the smaller room air conditioner temperature sensor (the gas filled brass tube) could be placed in something or temperature isolated for better reading performance. During the testing phase, we dropped the temperature sensor of the small air conditioner in a cup with hot water and the air conditioner kept on cooling until the cup with the water was chilled to the set point.

- All the air conditioners seem to work fine.


- many other issues on the Issues Tracking Spreadsheet were able to be moved from open to closed.


4) Next meeting

- After Expedition 399, ~early/mid July 2023 


Document links