Facilities

Environmental Engineering

Research

The Environmental Engineering Graduate program is located in the Sustainable Energy and Environmental Complex and Laboratories (SEEC/SEEL) at ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ Boulder. Our laboratories are available for environmental engineering research for microbiology, chemistry, water quality, air quality, molecular biology, toxicology, and field ecology. Available equipment includes:

  • Bench scale UV photolysis and ozonation systems;
  • Solar Simulator;
  • UV-vis spectrophotometer (Varian Cary 100);
  • HACH DR 5000 UV-vis spectrophotometer;
  • HACH DR 6000 UV-vis spectrophotometer;
  • Agilent 1100 High Performance Liquid Chromatograph (HPLC) system with photodiode array detector;
  • Two Agilent 1200 High Performance Liquid Chromatograph (HPLC) system with photodiode array detector;
  • Fluorescence and organic carbon detection;
  • Dionex Ion Chromatograph (120);
  • Perkin Elmer fluorometer;
  • Shimadzu TOC-VCSH (high temperature combustion, nondispersive infrared detection) and total dissolved nitrogen (TDN) TNM-1 unit (chemiluminescence detection).
  • Sievers 5310C TOC (Persulfate UV Oxidation)
  • GC FID/ECD
  • GC ECD
  • Size exclusion chromatography

The Environmental Microbiology Laboratory supports research in virology/cell culture, molecular microbiology, bacteriology, phage microbiology, toxicology, media preparation. Multiple temperature and variable atmosphere incubators support a broad spectrum of classical microbiological assays. This laboratory also supports mammalian cell culture, including 10 m3 stainless steel walk-in chambers isolating controlled environment incubators separating pre- and post-infection cell lines.  Also included, are standard equipment for plaque assays (inverted microscopes), genetic material extraction, membrane immobilization, and DNA/RNA hybridizations.  PCR and qPCR thermocyclers, electrophoresis units and associated illuminators, photographic documentation equipment as well as DNA sequencer are all available. This laboratory includes a microscopy lab which houses several modern microscopes including a Olympus phase contrast station, and a Nikon E-400 compound epifluorescent microscope with multiple filter sets capable of detecting a wide spectrum of biological stains. Access to a transmission, scanning and environmental electron microscope is also available in ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ Boulder's imaging facility.

The Center for Environmental Mass Spectrometry (CEMS) focuses on the detection of pharmaceuticals, hormones, and other organic contaminants in water and evaluating the effectiveness of methods for removing these compounds. Instrumentation housed at the Center for Environmental Mass Spectrometry includes:

  • Agilent Technologies 6540 Liquid Chromatograph/Quadrupole/Time-of-Flight/mass spectrometer
  • The Agilent Technologies 6220 Accurate-Mass Time-of-Flight LC/MS with MassHunter Workstation software
  • Agilent Model 6460 Triple Quadrupole mass spectrometer and model 1200 liquid chromatograph (HPLC) featuring Femtogram-level sensitivity
  • Agilent Model 6330 LC/MS ion trap with Agilent Model 1100 HPLC.
  • Agilent 5972 GC/MSD model with autosampler
  • Gilson GX-271 ASPEC automated Solid Phase Extraction (SPE) unit for SPE, sample
  • Turbovap LV nitrogen evaporator system for concentrating organic samples
  • Computationally based research is supported by the ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ Boulder's Research Computing office and by high performance scientific computing systems housed with the Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering.

A separate laboratory on ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ main campus is licensed for radioisotope handling and storage (35S, 32P, 14C, and 15N) and includes two liquid scintillation counters.