UMass Environmental Engineering Laboratory Equipment

The Environmental and Water Resources Engineering Program occupies the top two floors of the new ELab II building (completed 2004). This includes about 13,000 sq-ft 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 and Water Resources 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
• Granular Media filtration Setup
• Hollow fiber membrane Reactors
• A wide range of additional process equipment

Equipment for Analysis of Microorganisms and for Biotechnology

• DNA Engine Thermocycler (MJ Research)
• Luminary Workstation
• Electrophoresis
• Cleanbox DNA Workstation (MJ Research)
• Hybridization Oven/Shaker (Amersham Biosciences)
• PCR Workstation

Equipment for Trace Analysis of Organic Compounds

• 5 Total Organic Carbon Analyzers (Shimadzu 5000, Shimadzu TOC/V, Shimadzu 5050, Shimadzu 4000, and Dorhmann DC-80)
• Total Nitrogen Analyzer (Shimadzu TOC/V)
• 2 Total Organic Halide Analyzers (Euroglass and Dorhmann)
• 7 Capillary Gas Chromatographs, most equipped with both FID and ECD (HP/Agilent 6890s, 5890s and Varian 3300, 3500).
• 3 Gas Chromatograph - Mass Spectrometers (each with dual injectors)
  • Quadrupole instrument with EI, PCI and NCI (HP 5988)
  • Ion trap instrument with MS/MS capabilities (Varian Saturn)
  • Time of flight instrument (Waters GC-TOF)
• 3 Liquid Chromatographs (2 Alliance HPLCs and an Acuity UPLC),equipped with diode array detectors, fluorescence and conductivity
• 2 Liquid Chromatograph - Mass Spectrometers
  • Finnigan LCQ (MS, MS 2 to MS 10 ) with Waters Alliance
  • Waters Quattro-micro triple quadrupole with Alliance HPLC, can also be used with Acuity UPLC
• Pyroprobe for pyrolysis-GC/MS (CDS-2000)

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)
• Total Carbon and Total Nitrogen
• 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 EWRE 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 EWRE program. In addition, there are full-time GC/MS and NMR research scientists who run the two facilities.

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