Entry 007: Back on track after exams and semester break has begun

With all the stressful weeks of preparations for exams are over, it's time for us to get back on our FYP. We finally had a meeting with our supervisor on Tuesday, 11/9/2012. We had a hard time progressing from where we had left-off. With the guidance from our supervisor, we are finally back on track.

Firstly, we were assigned to calculate the quantity of petroleum and flammable materials (PFM) that are available in a lab so as to ensure that the quantity is met with the safety regulation of 0.8 L/sq.m (max) subject to 250 L per lab. The two designated labs for this assignment will be a chemist lab (T11B401) and a chemical engineering lab (W318). Secondly, we have to find out how many containers have a label that comply with GHS standard.

Apart from the assignments, we were told to help out a TSO with the chemical inventory. So the next day, on Wednesday 12/9/2012, we helped Ms Florence, TSO for T11B401, with the recording of supplier(s) of various chemicals. Firstly, we put on our personal protective equipment. We then took out the chemicals on the trays in the cabinet, put them on a table and arranged them alphabetically. After which, we went down the check-list given by the TSO to ensure that the chemicals are available and we recorded down the supplier too. If there are chemicals that are not mentioned in the check-list and they are available in the lab, we had to take down the name of the chemicals and their supplier. By doing so, we realised that none of the chemicals have label that comply with the GHS standard. We did the same thing for T11B410. Finally, we arranged back the chemicals in the trays provided alphabetically and printed out stickers with alphabets for each tray (eg. a tray will have a sticker showing A -> B, another tray will sticker showing C -> E, etc) except for the chemicals in T11B410. By doing all of this, we can experience how current TSO carry out the checking and managing of chemical inventory.

The following day, on Thursday 13/9/2012, we continued to help the TSO again. Now we had to transfer the inventory check-list (hard-copy) that was given yesterday into soft-copy. After which, we had another meeting with our supervisor after lunch. We discussed with her on our progress so far and what we have done. We were told to improve on the soft-copy of the inventory, so that was another assignment. After the meeting, we went back to T11B401 to return the updated soft-copy and kept one copy to ourselves. We then discussed about coming up with a questionnaire for TSOs so that we can help to improve on the current chemical inventory management. Without forgetting, we asked Ms Florence for the PFM inventory forms so that we can calculate the total quantity of PFM available in T11B401 to find out whether the actual quantity meet with the safety regulation. Since the TSO did not know the dimensions of the lab, we did our own measurements of the lab with a measuring tape. After we did the calculations, we concluded that the actual quantity of PFM in T11B401 met with the safety regulation and it was well below 0.8 L/sq.m. Now we are left with W318.

On Friday 14/9/2012, we came back to school to continue with our FYP. We were improving on the soft-copy and preparing an excel spreadsheet for the calculations of quantity of PFM. We hope to progress more as we move forward. :)

Entry 006: Exams week progress

On 25/07/2012, we had a meeting with our supervisor once again. During this meeting, our group showed her some of the labelling samples as well as ways to transfer information from excel to words via mailmerge. The labelling sample include waste disposal & GHS standards (Refer to attachment).

However, the method we proposed to our supervisor is quite tedious in terms of preparation work which requires a handful amount of time. Since the school has made a decision on purchasing ChemWatch labelling which would probably solve this problem, our supervisor recommended us to prepare a lecture powerpoint slides on GHS.

Powerpoint lecture on GHS includes:
--> Samples of container
--> Safety Data Sheet (SDS)
--> Elements of GHS (Chemical name, hazard statement, signal word)
--> Dimensions of labels

The next meeting was on 08/08/12, which was during the revision week for EST(End-Semester Test), thus our supervisor only told us to get started with gantt chart as well as touch up on the slides that we have done.

That's all for now~