Special analytic-technique services offered by the Center for Advanced Separation Techniques located at the Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ustí nad Labem and the center research activities will be introduced by Ing. Ivana Barchánková, Ph.D. from the Faculty of Environment on April, 17th, 2024 at 2:30 p.m. The presentation will Join Zoom Meeting https://cesnet.zoom.us/j/94379443100

The Center for Advanced Separation Techniques – Transforming Waste to Valuable Products

P. Midula. L. Oravová, I. Barchánková, P. Kuráň

The Center for Advanced Separation Techniques (CPST) are detached laboratories of the Faculty of Environment in the UniCRE building located near the university campus area. The CPST main research and service activities include the development of new analytical methods with a special focus on the characterization and identification of unknown substances in products from advanced chemical technologies for the transformation of waste to “green chemicals”. Furthermore, CPST provides the analysis of samples from the environment and technological processes, preparation and testing of new special sorbents for environmental applications.

CPST’s most sophisticated instrumentation for the analysis of complex organic mixtures includes a two-dimensional gas chromatography system combined with an Agilent high-resolution mass spectrometer (HRMS) with an electron impact allowing low-energy ionization of molecules for confirmation of identification and molecular formula. The system can also work in "hyphenation" mode - parallel measurement of samples on two detectors - flame ionization (FID) and HRMS (GCxGC-qTOF-HRMS/FID Agilent).

Among the unique equipment in the CPST laboratories is also a tandem microreactor (Frontier, model Rx-3050TR) for the in-depth study of the phenomena that occur during the pyrolytic process. The reactor consists of pyrolytic and catalytic separated cells and is significantly effective in the investigation of both non-catalytic and catalytic conversion of plastics and biomass (solid, liquid) via micropyrolysis into valuable chemicals. The tandem microreactor is directly coupled with Agilent GC-MS system with a single quadrupole enabling not only liquid but also headspace and SPME sample injection. This GC-MS system is also applied for less demanding targeted analyses of known substances.

Worth mentioning are some other systems: GC-FID Dani system is used mainly for determination of hydrocarbon oil index. ICP-OES and ICP-MS serve for the analysis of elements in water, plant matter, and soils or ICP results are used for sorption isothermal modelling. There are several devices for sample preparation in CPST including, microwave digestion MARS instrument, analytical and infrared balances KERN for dry matter determination, Memmert dryer, rotary evaporators, Kuderna-Danish concentrator, Retsch sieve, distillation apparatus, vacuum pumps and solid phase extraction manifolds. In addition, CPST has at its disposal a technological laboratory for mechanical operations (sieving, preparation of a larger amount of sample or new sorbents in the order of kilograms).

As part of contractual research, CPST carries out measurements in cooperation with regional companies such as UniCRE a.s., Spolchemie a.s., Mondi Štětí a.s., Unipetrol RPA, s.r.o. etc.

 

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