Facilities
Our facilities are equipped with sample preparation and analytical instrumentation such as the Energy Dispersive X-ray Fluorescence, Elemental Analyzer, Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer, and many more housed in the Department of Geology. To see the full list of equipment and instrumentation please visit Kent State University Department of Geology facilities page.
www.kent.edu/geology/facilities
www.kent.edu/geology/facilities
Facilities
The Arc-Geo-chemistry Lab is an analytical preparation lab primarily used to prepare aqueous and solid solutions for major, minor, and trace element analysis. Spex Ball Mill for powdering solid samples. Claisse LeNeo Fusion Fluxer, a fusion instrument that prepares solid and liquid samples for major element and trace element analysis. Carver Press System for major and minor element analysis of solids. A solid digestion system (geological and biological specimen) for trace element analysis. Sulfur Analysis of organic rich rocks a wet chemistry setup for extracting sulfides such as pyrite.
The Geochemical Weighing Lab is for accurately weighing solid samples for analytical combustion and trace elemental analysis. This lab houses both a semi-micro balance (trace element analysis) and a micro-balance (elemental combustion analysis); the lab space is located underground, which allows for accurate and precise weighing measurements, allowing for more precise and accurate analytical instrumentation measurements.
The Analytical Geochemistry Laboratories is a shared laboratory instrument space amongst the Geology faculty. In this shared lab space, I contribute two instrument: Costech 4010 Elemental Analyzer (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and sulfur analysis) and Dynamic Reactive Cell Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer (DRC-ICPMS) along with a Cetac Laser Ablation system.
The Costech 4010 Elemental Analyzer is used to measure light elements such as carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and sulfur of solid phases such as sediments and biological samples.
Dynamic Reactive Cell Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer (DRC-ICPMS) along with a Cetac Laser Ablation system is used to measure trace elements of solid (laser ablation), aqueous and liquid solutions in the range of parts per billion.
Other instruments in the Analytical Geochemistry Laboratories:
- Thermo Scientific iCAP PRO XP ICP-OES
- Picarro G2131-i Gas Analyzer
- Shimadzu total organic carbon analyzer
- Thermo Scientific Dionex ICS-2100 ion chromatography system
- Nicolet iS50 FT-IR Spectrometer with Attenuated Total Reflection
- Shimadzu UV-1800 UV-Visible spectrophotometer
The Solid Phase Characterization Lab is a multi-user facility dedicated to characterizing soil, sediment, and rock samples to determine bulk mineralogical and elemental composition, and grain and sub-grain-scale texture and morphology.
- Hitachi TM3030 Tabletop Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) with Bruker Quantax 70 Plus Energy Dispersive Spectrometer-Morphology and Texture
- Malvern Panalytical Epsilon 3XLE benchtop energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence (EDXRF) spectrometer - Major Elements
- Rigaku MiniFlex X-ray diffractometer (XRD) with PDXL software including the Whole Pattern Powder Fitting (WPPF) method, connected to the ICDD PDF-2 database (NSF-EAR-IF grant #1658681)- Mineralogy