Our Laboratories

In our laboratories we have instruments for analytical characterization of a broad range of samples:

  1. Solid Samples: we can perform the analysis of ashes content, elemenatal analysis (C, H, N, O, S), the FT-IR analysis, the mineral composition through acidic digestion and analysis with MP-AES, as well as chemical oxygen demand. Finally, we have the instrumentation for the analytical pyrolysis online with a Frontieer online pyrolyser coupled with a GC-MS which can be used for analytical pyrolysis or evolved gas analysis (EGA).
  2. For liquids and gases, our instrumentation and expertise have a broad range. We have several gas chromatographer (GC) installed in our labs with multiple detectors such as mass detectors, FID, TCD. Also, we have a combined GC-MS-FID for quali-quantitative analysis of unknown samples, and also a PAL autosamples which allow robotic analysis for SPME and headspace, namely a wide range of volatile species. We also master derivatization of liquid for the detection of heavier compounds typically not analyzable by GC. Despite GC, we also have HPLC instrumentation with different detectors such as mass with triple quadrupole, RID, DAD.

Our instrumentation is required to characterise the complex samples deriving from thermochemistry, which we perform ourselves thanks to our equipment which allows us to perform:

  1. Hydrothermal carbonization (HTC): we have two autoclaves which perform HTC in batches in our laboratories, and also a continuous HTC prototype system. 
  2. Slow-Intermediate-Fast pyrolysis: thank to two small-scale furnaces equipped with tubular quartz reactors and a medium-sized furnace equipped with both ceramic and quartz tubular reactors we can perform slow or intermediate pyrolysis from 1 to 300 grams at a time. Also, we have a micro-fluidized bed pyrolyser to perform fast pyrolysis using inert or catalytic bed pyrolysis or gasification in a 0.5-2 grams scale. 
  3. Flash pyrolysis: in our laboratories, we have both offline and online systems to perform flash pyrolysis and characterize the products through GC-MS for online, or a plurality of instruments for offline analytical pyrolysis.

Finally, we also perform biological tests on complex substrates like pyrolysis or HTC liquids,  derived from biomass or sludge, which provided us the expertise to test even the most challenging substrates.