Meetings here, seminars there, reactions in the lab – yay!

It seems that the day before your vacation, everything always falls into your lap, and today has been no exception. Looks like we’ll be making a 200 gallon batch of coating here (usually the largest we handle is about 20 gallons). This is the second time we’ve made the coating on this scale, and the logistical difficulties presented are numerous – pumps, hoses, filters, big-ass mixing equipment. I reckon it’s what I signed up for when I became a chemical engineer, but I’d prefer it if we were a little better equipped to handle batches on that scale. As a for instance, once we fill the tote tank with the material and are ready to ship it to the customer, we have to estimate the gross weight – we don’t have a scale big enough to weigh it.

We finally got the fume hood back into working order and I’ve started the urethane reaction again, but there’s no way I’ll finish it today. I’ll have to put the polyol into the oven (it freezes at room temperature) and pick up where I left off on Monday. This has been the easy part – starting next week I’ll be working with the isocyanates. Man, I hate isocyanates.

On the agenda for tonight: laundry and packing. Gotta make sure I don’t have any AK-47‘s or straight razors tucked away in my luggage for the airport security people to find. On the bright side, according to American Airlines all of their Chicago flights that have flown out from RDU today have been on time or even left early. That certainly seems promising.