Organic geochemistry laboratories

Organic geochemistry wet laboratory

More Information

About the Organic geochemistry laboratories

The organic geochemistry facility (led by Dr Gordon Inglis) hosts a variety of instruments designed to characterise organic matter from the environment and the geological record.

The facility has dedicated sample preparation lab, wet chemistry lab space, and an instrumentation lab including a gas chromatograph, gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer, gas chromatograph-isotope ratio-mass spectrometer, and a liquid chromatograph-mass spectrometer.

The facility is part of the SEAPORT carbon laboratories. This represents a major expansion of out geochemical capabilities at the University of Southampton.

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Technical specification

Our facility specialises in the extraction, purification, separation, and chemical and isotopic characterization of complex organic mixtures found in biological and environmental materials.

Gas chromatography (GC) is used to separate complex mixtures of volatile compounds. A range of hyphenated techniques (for example, GC-mass spectrometry) are then used to characterise these complex mixtures.

We also operate a GC-isotope ratio mass spectrometer (GC-C-IRMS) which enables compound specific δ¹³C, δ¹⁵N and δ²H value determinations.

We currently operate the following instruments:

ThermoFisher Trace 1310 Gas Chromatograph with Flame Ionisation Detector (compound separation and quantification)
ThermoFisher Trace 1310 Gas Chromatograph coupled to a Thermo TSQ8000 Triple Quadrupole Mass Spectrometer (molecular identification)
ThermoFisher Trace 1310 Gas Chromatograph coupled to a Thermo Delta V Plus Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometer (compound specific δ¹³C, δ¹⁵N and δ²H value determinations)
Agilent LC/MSD Liquid Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer (molecular identification)

Other operational features include a Thermo Accelerated Solvent Extraction (ASE) system, a TurboVap LV sample concentrator, a Genevac EZ-2 centrifugal evaporation system, and a fully outfitted wet chemistry laboratory to undertake a wide variety of sample preparation.