Organic Geochemistry Lab

The Organic Geochemistry lab focuses on lipid biomarkers derived from plants, algae, bacteria and their diagenetically altered products to reconstruct (paleo)environmental reconstructions. Typically, soils and sediments are extracted, and the compounds obtained fractionated and subsequently analyzed for their composition. Depending on the size or type of sample, extractions are conducted by either Microwave extraction, Accelerated Solvent Extraction (ASE), Soxhlet extraction, or ultrasonication. After fractionation, a gas chromatography (GC-)FID, a GC-FID combined with an FPD detector, two GC- mass spectrometers (GC-MS) systems, two HPLC-MS systems and for isotopic compositions a GC-IRMS are available to qualify and quantify the biomarkers of interest.