The infrastructure consists of a Siemens SOMATOM Definition AS + 128 CT scanner, a data processing and storage unit, a sedimentology laboratory, and hydraulics, bio-sedimentology and hydrology equipment. The scale of this infrastructure is unique in Canada and in a class of its own worldwide.
This pilot laboratory is a powerful, mobile and flexible infrastructure for testing and demonstrating, at low cost, and directly in industrial environments or on degraded sites, new remediation and decontamination processes before their implementation on a real scale. . The laboratory team works to develop technologies for the treatment, decontamination and recovery of various matrices polluted by metals and other types of pollutants. The development of processes contributing to sustainable development in the field of environmental technologies is a priority research area of the INRS. The laboratory has a multifunctional mobile pilot plant to operate various types of physical, chemical and biological processes for the treatment of soils, hazardous wastes, gases, as well as industrial residues and effluents directly on contaminated sites.
A mass spectrometry service is offered to the scientific community for the identification of organic molecules, the analysis of natural products, the quantification of metabolites of pharmaceutical products, the analysis of trace pollutants, the determination of the molecular weight of proteins, the sequencing of peptides. The service includes, among others, a Micromass Quattro II triple quadrupole equipped with gas and liquid chromatography interfaces. It can be operated in positive and negative mode and carry out a mass scan up to 4000 m / z. The mass spectrometry service can perform a variety of MS / MS experiments such as daughter ion, parent ion and neutral fragment loss analysis. Various ionization modes such as electronic impact (EI), chemical ionization (CI), chemical ionization at atmospheric pressure (APCI), electrospray and nanospray can be used. It has an interface for gas chromatography with an HP 6890 gas chromatograph and an interface for HPLC HP 1100 liquid chromatography equipped with an automatic injector and a UV detector.
The service is able to meet several needs in the animal, plant or microbial fields, including:
• Research and identification of viruses from all sources;
• Research and identification (Gram-positive or Gram-negative) and description of bacteria from all sources
• Research and identification of contaminants (eg mycoplasma) in clinical specimens or cell cultures
• Immunoelectromicroscopy with or without colloidal gold on a liquid sample (negative staining) or on cell sections (pre- or post-embedding techniques)
• Quality control of viral fractions of density gradients
• Cell morphology on thin sections
• Quantification of viruses (eg Retrovirus) using latex spheres of known concentration by negative staining.
• Quality control of biological products released to municipal sewage
• Research of Retrovirus in cells, identification and count of the proportion of infected cells (cell sections)
