Our research interests focus on the mobility and retention of heavy metal ions in soil. In a fundamental sense, soil is a natural chromatographic stationary phase. Unfortunately, the physical nature of soil makes it impractical to pack a column with it. We overcome this impracticality by preparing "synthetic soils" which can be easily packed in columns. Once we have packed a column, we then do fundamental retention studies of heavy metals on these "synthetic soils". The aim of our research is to use our results to be able to say something about the actual migration of metal ions through real soils.
We use a three-pronged attack to investigate the problem:
- Synthesis of "synthetic soils" in which we covalently bond humic and fulvic acids to various chromatographic supports.
- Fundamental retention studies of various heavy metal ions on our prepared "soils".
- Synthesis of novel water soluble porphyrins to use as post-column reagents to aid the detection of the heavy metal ions under investigation.
Additionally we have a keen interest in fermentation and distillation science. One of our more recent projects involves a carbohydrate analysis of wort (or pre-beer if you like). We do a mash of wheat and spelt and compare the carbohydrate profiles.
If you're an undergraduate Chemistry major, interested in doing research on any of these projects, by all means stop by my office and we'll have a chat.
All material (except for some code and external links) © Jeffery A. Schneider, 2003