The labs of the OBG group are well equipped with a wide range of apparatus and sophisticated machinery. Wet preparation organic chemistry is catered for with numerous extraction, distillation and filtration glassware, fume cupboards, ovens, rotary evaporators, two muffle furnaces, one freeze dryer and four centrifuges amongst other things. One of the centrifuges is a microcentrifuge (Jouan, MR23i) temperature controlled system. There is also a tangential flow filtration unit (Easy Load Masterflex - Millipore). On the analytical side the most important equipment are:

• One GC/LC-MSMS (TSQ-7000). This machine is a sophisticated and modern piece of equipment and it is used mainly for research. It was bought from Finnigan-Thermoquest and it can function both in LC and GC mode as well as MS and MSMS modes. It is equiped with a HPLC quarternary pump (Spectra System P400) and a autosampler (AS100) when operating in LCMS/MS mode (either in ACPI or ESI mode) and with a TRACE 2000 Series GC when operating in GSMS/MS mode. The instrument is attached to a NT Workstation equipped with Excalibur software for further processing.
• Six GCs (together with the Marine Pollution group). One Agilent 6890N (with FID, ECD and TCD detectors), four HP5890 (FID and ECD detectors) and one Carlo Erba 5300 Mega Series (wih FID detector) .
• Three HPLCs. One Agilent 1100 Series equipped with a quartenary pump and a diode array and flourescence detectors, a ternary SP8800 pump with a flourescence detector and one equipped with a binary Spectra Series P200 pump with a SP8450 UV/VIS detector.
• One CHN analyser (NC 2500 - CE Instruments)
• Various spectrophotomenters used both by our group, the rest of the research groups as well as undergraduate students in the department.

Gas Chromatography is one of the techniques most commonly used by our group and when coupled with mass spectrometry (GCMS) is used to separate individual compounds (for example lipids) isolated from environmental samples. Many organic compounds can not be analysed by GCMS, because they are too big and have very high boiling point or too polar or ionised. These are normally separated using liguid chromatography. A pump is used to "push" the liquid phase through a chromatographic column. This is High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) and commonly a flouorimeter or a UV detector is connected at the end of the column. When an HPLC system is connected to a mass spectrometer, this is (HP)Liquid Chromatography Mass Spectrometry (HPLCMS). In the Organic Biogeochemistry Group, HPLCMS is used for the analysis and identification of pigments, lipid conjugates, proteins and peptides.