UMass Environmental Engineering Laboratory Equipment
The Environmental Engineering Program occupies the top two floors of the new ELab II building (completed 2004). This includes about 40,000 ft 2 of research laboratories, graduate student offices and computing laboratories, and 6 walk-in environmental control rooms. Shop facilities available in the College of Engineering include a machine shop, a woodworking shop, a metal and welding shop, and electronics design and fabrication equipment. The University also maintains a well-equipped glass blowing shop. In addition, the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering has two full-time technicians available to support research efforts.
A wide range of instrumentation is available in the laboratories of the Environmental Engineering Program on campus. Some of this equipment includes:
Process Testing Equipment
- A fully-instrumented and computer-controlled laboratory ozone contacting system, with liquid and gas-phase ozone monitors
- An ultraviolet light reactor with LPUV bulb array
- Gravity Settling and Flotation Jar Test Machines
- Ultrafiltration Membrane Test Cell
- Hollow fiber membrane Reactors
- A wide range of additional process equipment
Equipment for Analysis of Microorganisms and for Biotechnology
- DNA Engine Thermocycler (MJ Research)
- Cleanbox DNA Workstation (MJ Research)
- Hybridization Oven/Shaker (Amersham Biosciences)
- PCR Workstation
Equipment for Trace Analysis of Inorganic Compounds
- 4 Ion Chromatographs employing Chemical Suppression (Dionex)
- Inductively-coupled plasma – mass spectrometer (Perkin Elmer Elan 9000 ICP/MS)
- Inductively-coupled plasma – emission spectrometer (Perkin Elmer ICP/AES)
- Many single analyte YSI meters and clustered sondes
- Many Ion specific electrodes and ISE meters
Equipment for Sample Preparation
- 2 Freeze dryers with shell freezer
- Rotary evaporators (two 1-L bench-top units and a 20-L floor unit)
- Preparative-scale LC columns (up to 9L volume)
- 2 Purge & Trap Units (Envirochem)
- Closed Loop Stripping Apparatus (Brechbuhler)
- Centrifuges (floor and bench-top units)
- Ultrafiltration cells and pressurized reservoirs
- SPE manifolds and associated equipment
Miscellaneous
- Field sampling equipment
- Flow measuring devices for flowing surface waters
- 4 UV-Vis Spectrophotometers (diode array and photomultiplier-based units)
- Spectrofluorometer
- Autoclaves
In addition, there are other state-of-the-art analytical instruments at the UMass-Amherst campus, which are available. For example, the campus mass spectrometry facility has a JOEL high resolution GC/MS which has been used by EVE faculty on many occasions. The UMass NMR Facility has several Bruker NMR instruments, (AMX-II 500, DSX 300, MSL 300 and ASX 300) all of which are available for use by the EVE program. In addition, there are full-time GC/MS and NMR research scientists who run the two facilities.