Andreas Schaefer

Dr. rer. nat., Staff Scientist

A new Surface Area and Porosity Laboratory - ongoing


The division of Applied Chemistry at Chalmers has invested into building a new laboratory for physisorption and chemisorption experiments. The old Laboratory was hosting a 21 year old Tristar 3000 instrument from Micromeritics and an ASAP 2020 plus instrument (also Micromeritics) that both will live on in the new lab together with new instrumentation that I cannot disclose here at this point.
I have designed the new laboratory from ground up and it is honestly a lot fun to have this opportunity but also quite some responsibility. Tearing down a wall and having in total 160 meters of gas lines put is not an inexpensive endeavor, to say the least. The new laboratory will now finally also have a fume hood and a ventilated storage for save handling and storing of less friendly chemicals. In total 10 different gases will be available for different experiments to cover the range of micro- and mesoporous materials, i.e. materials with pore sizes of 0.5 - 50 nm. A vapor source makes the study of water adsorption or the adsorption of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) possible even at temperatures above ambient thanks to a thermostat. I am going to  write a detailed entry for the new lab later on before it gets way to specific here. For now, I want to show off some pictures from the ongoing building process. If you are interested in how this project moves on I invite you to check back here frequently.
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Update June 2nd: We are now in week 13 of the construction. Most of the installation has been done. This week the furniture is supposed to arrive. More pictures soon! Stay tuned!