Research Facilities

Many of the department's research laboratories recently moved into the newly constructed Engineering Teaching and Research Laboratory Building. Included in this building is a suite of interconnected laboratories dedicated to bioprocessing. The labs are clustered around a room containing commonly used equipment such as a large autoclave, 5-L fermenter and high purity water systems.

Bioprocessing Facilities
Approximately half of the bio-processing effort at WSU is housed in two very large laboratories equipped with sterile laminar flow hoods, incubators, various novel bioreactors, microtiter-plate reader, sterilization equipment, microscopes, a clinical blood cell separator, cell counter, other facilities and sup-plies needed for cell culture and biotechnology, and several computer systems for control and optimization studies. The remainder of the work is housed in three bioseparations laboratories equipped with devices of electrophoretic, chromatographic, and centrifugal field flow fractionation separations, and the biosensor laboratory described below. In addition to working in Chemical Engineering's own laboratories, the bioprocessing faculty, graduate students, and postdocs collaborate with investigators from other disciplines who welcome our personnel for sample analysis and training in their laboratories. These facilities include those in the Department of Veterinary and Microbiology and Pathology and the Institute of Biological Chemistry

Biosensor Laboratory
A biosensor laboratory located in the Chemical Engineering De-partment houses on-line physiology recording equipment used to study sensing in living lymphocytes, neurons and neuronal membrane analogues. For this research there is extensive interaction with investigators from other campus laboratories including a membrane transport group in Zoology, an immunologist in Veterinary Microbiology and Pathology, microchip fabrication group in Mechanical and Materials Engineering, and researchers in Electrical and Computer Engi-neering who work on embedded chips, signal processing and systems modeling.

Bioremediation Labroratory
The bioremediation laboratory is equipped with a broad spectrum of equipment for the cultivation of bacterial cells, for the determi-nation of gas and aqueous concentrations of contaminants and nutrients, and for monitoring reactor conditions during contaminant destruction. Additionally, the bioremediation laboratory makes use of modern local area networking technology to allow each person in this research group to access the analysis tools and experimental data to allow effect interaction between research projects.

CMER Facilities
Chemical Engineering students working on projects associated with the Center for Multiphase Environmental Research have full access to the facilities in the Center. These facilities include specialized analytical equipment including an ICP/MS, an LC/MS, an X-ray diffraction unit for soil analysis, three ion chromatographs, two gas chromatographs, an HPLC, an epifluorescent microscope, a microscopic FTIR system, three diode array spectrometers, a kinetic phosphorescence analyzer which will provide ppt measurements of actinide species, two microplate readers capable of both fluorescent and absorbance measurements, a scintillation counter for assay of radioactivity, a PCR thermocycler, an advanced solvent extraction system for rapid extraction of organic compounds from solid matrices, an anaerobic chamber for culturing anaerobic bacteria, a respirometer, a gel electrophoresis system, visual and fluorescent image analysis, soil column reactor systems, advanced computing systems including a Compaq ES40 high speed UNIX workstation and a distributed computing cluster based on the Linux operating system. Students work in a variety of well-equipped laboratories in Dana Hall, and in other locations across campus. All students working in the CMER are provided with a modern desktop computer connected to the campus ethernet, equipped with a variety of word processing, presentation and analysis software.

Colloid and Inerfacial Studies Laboratories
Laboratories for the study of colloid and interfacial phenomena have recently been dramatically improved as a result of an NSF Laboratory Equipment grant. The laboratories now have state-of-the-art instrumentation for quasielastic and classical light scattering, spread monolayer studies, contact angle analysis, centrifugal particle sizing, field flow fractionation, viscometry, zeta potential measurements, potenti-ometric/ conductiometric titrations and surfactant analysis via ion chromatography. These instruments are all linked to a central laboratory computer for data collection and analysis. Model polymeric colloids are generated within the laboratories through the use of a temperature-controlled emulsion polymerization reactor and are purified using either a serum replacement apparatus or a high speed centrifuge.

Materials Characterization Laboratory
A dynamic x-ray diffraction system (DXRD) is used for studies of kinetics and materials processing at high temperatures. The DXRD consists of an automated X-ray diffractometer, a hot stage for atmosphere control and heating up to 1700°C, a position-sensitive detector that is capable of scanning at rates as high as 100 deg/min, and a computer system for control and data processing. Other lab equipment includes a differential thermal analyzer (DTA), a thermal gravimetric analyzer (TGA), and a BET surface analyzer. Through the Materials Research Center fast Fourier transfer infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) is also accessible.

Materials-Hazardous Wastes Facilities
Electrochemical instrumentation used in environmental and materials research includes a high-speed rotator, bipotentiostat, waveform generator, X-Y recorder, polarograph and a variety of disk, ring-disk, and other electrodes.

Computer Facilities
Students working in the chemical engineering department have access to a broad spectrum of computational facilities. All research laboratories are equipped with laboratory microcomputers. In addition, students have access to the department's computer facility, which is equipped with several IBM compatible computers, networked to the department's servers. Most of the computers in the department are connected to the campus ethernet that allows very high speed access to the department, college, and campus computer facilities. Additionally, computers in several research groups are connected to local area networks that facilitate information exchange within these research groups. WSU also supplies state-of-the-art mainframe computer support. Each student is provided an account on this machine and is allowed unlimited CPU time. Students also have access to the college's facilities, including more than 20 DecStation engineering workstations, an HP 9000/720 engineering workstation and several silicon Graphics engineering workstations.