Acquisition of an Ion Chromatograph (IC) for Water Quality Analyses in an Undergraduate-Led Lab

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The acquisition of an Ion Chromatograph (IC) will upgrade the water quality analysis facilities at the all-women's Barnard College. The funding will be used to purchase the instrument, to train users, and to enable users to present their results at national conferences. The Ion Chromatograph will be used by mainly undergraduate students at Barnard College to measure water quality parameters. The anion data is critical for understanding the fundamental chemical, physical and biological controls that affect water quality, and how that water quality changes over time. For example Chloride and Bromide can be used to trace natural and anthropogenic recharge whereas nitrate and nitrite are essential nutrients but can also impact water quality. The students are part of collaborative teams and the data they collect will be used in their undergraduate thesis research and peer-reviewed publications. These collaborations include both national and international projects looking at water quality. Examples include engineering green infrastructure in New York City to improve water quality of runoff and examining groundwater in Vietnam to better understand groundwater recharge in relation to Arsenic contamination.Few measurements are more fundamental to environmental science than the concentration of ions in solution. Over the last 9 years, the Mailloux lab has conducted these measurements using a Dionex ICS-2000 Ion Chromatograph (IC) housed at Barnard College, an undergraduate women?s college in New York City. This workhorse instrument has sadly died. It had been used to measure anions and low molecular organic acids in water collected from groundwater, surface water, and laboratory experiments. Since the instrument was bought in September 2008 we have run over 24,000 samples, blanks, and standards. The diverse data from these measurements has been used in 9 peer-reviewed papers with the PI, with 3 of the papers having an undergraduate co-author and 8 of the papers having a graduate student co-author. In addition, the IC has been used in at least 19 senior theses and is regularly used in 2 classes. The goal of this award is to replace the broken instrument in order to maintain our research momentum, run a free short course to teach the students how to use the new instrument, and to take students to a national meeting. The new instrument we are requesting is a Dionex Integrion with an AS-AP autosampler equipped to run anions and low weight organic molecules such as acetate and lactate. The new instrument will be used on NSF and non-NSF projects to analyze samples from both the field and laboratory experiments on undergraduate and graduate student led projects. To support current NSF funding using this instrument, we have current demand in excess of 2500 samples per year, and expect to continue to run thousands of samples per year over the life of the instrument. The data obtained from these measurements will support peer reviewed research and publications, and the education of many young women. The new instrument will enable us to continue to perform world-class, student-driven research on water quality, hydrology, and biogeochemistry at Barnard College.