Riser Tensioner (yellow) consists of four huge cylinders which pull up and support the Riser pipe on the Moonpool.

BOP/Riser has started to descend on September 9th. Riser pipes, which are 90 ft (27 m) in each length, 21 inch (53 cm) in outer diameter used for mud circulation. In addition to the pressure tests of these lines and deployment of the ROV for checking the BOP, the BOP/Riser run operation is carrying out and connecting the Riser Tensioner consisting of four huge cylinders which pull up and support the Riser pipe.

Since the routine non-destructive measurements of cores had been finished in the last week, major activities in the laboratory were moved to setup experiments of instruments for discrete sample analyses, such as interstitial water chemistry, mineralogy, organic geochemistry and contamination test. The instruments activated for such experiments are Ion Chromatographer, UV-Spectrophotometer, Refractometer, ICP-AES, Rock Eval, XRD and GC-ECD as of this weekend. Routine measurements of some items, of which the adequate analytical conditions were confirmed through preparatory experiments, have already started and/or completed.

Three invited advisory scientists, Drs. M. Underwood, A. Kopf and H. Nishi, and three TAMU curators, Drs. J. Firth, P. Rumford and R. Culberson, who came onboard last weekend, were reviewing the Chikyu’s laboratory status and the core flow that was carried into practice during the last coring. Dr. M. Underwood, who is a specialty coordinator of NanTroSEIZE regarding Sedimentology, especially worked on XRD analyses with Chikyu marine technicians and provided us valuable analytical know-how regarding XRD.

The riser coring was not carried out in this week because of weather condition and equipment preparation. A major member rotation in the Laboratory members occurred also on September 15th and two Lab. Managers, K. Aoike and P. Gaillot were switched with H. Masago and K.T. Moe.

Week #07 [9/17-9/23]