Laboratory Investigations

We conduct experiments to analyse the processes and interaction strengths of contaminants or nutrients in the soil-water system. This may be useful to assess risks in the environment or understand the behaviour of substances in special circumstances.

Therefore, we apply a range of laboratory methods of which the most prominent are:

• Undisturbed and disturbed Soil Column Experiments with our 24 place equipment for unsaturated controlled water flux conditions.
• Sorption studies in batch experiments on the distribution of contaminants between the solid and the liquid phase.
• Method development and testing for specific purposes, e.g. thermodynamic processes during the adsorption of pesticides to mineral and organic surfaces by microcalorimetry.
• Other custom designed experiments to answer to specific problems.