Dr. Sarah Keenan and Dr.
Scott Beeler pose on front of the new Dionex ICS-6000 HPIC System housed inside
the Paleontology Research Laboratory at South Dakota Mines.
South Dakota Mines has added a new scientific instrument to the
portfolio of devices on campus that tests water for trace elements and
contaminants.
The new Thermo Scientific Dionex ICS-6000 High Pressure
Ion Chromatography System is housed in the university’s Paleontology Research
Laboratory. It adds to Mines’ overall capacity for highly accurate water
testing. “This is a nice complementary tool with other water testing
instruments we have on campus that allows us to get the full chemistry of any
water sample,” says Scott Beeler, Ph.D., a research scientist in the South
Dakota Mines Engineering and Mining Experiment Station (EMES). “Previously,
we could understand about 75% of the water chemistry of any sample; this gives
us the full picture.”
The instrument was paid for thanks to a $160,000 grant
from the National Science Foundation (NSF) that will also help Mines
researchers provide support, repairs and training for a similar instrument at Oglala Lakota College headquartered near the town of Kyle on Pine Ridge.
The new instrument enables a huge range of water
quality testing, from understanding the chemistry of contaminated waters in
work being done at Mines for the Department of Defense on PFAS, to studies on the water chemistry and its
relationship to rare microbial life found inside the Sanford
Underground Research Facility, to unique
studies and research, like the work underway on campus to determine how fast fossils erode once they are exposed to the
elements.
“None of this research was possible before this
instrument,” says Sarah Keenan, Ph.D., assistant professor of geology and geological engineering at Mines. “Previously, the nearest instrument of
this type was 300 miles away, and you can’t send a student that far away with
their water samples for a week and expect them to bring back data.” Keenan and Beeler are also incorporating the Dionex
ICS-6000 into their classes to give students a chance at hands-on learning with
cutting-edge scientific equipment.
The Dionex ICS-6000 is part of a suite of
instruments, including many in the university’s EMES, that are available for
broad research use by members of the public, academia and industry.