CHEMICAL AND LIFE SCIENCES - Singapore Polytechnic

More documents

Recommendations

Info

SCHOOL OF Chemical and life sciences includes FPLC, electrophoresis sets, microfuge, ultracentrifuge, freeze dryer and various fermenters. The Food Analysis Laboratory provides facilities for students to gain experience in the fundamentals of food chemistry and analysis. The laboratory is equipped with Kjeldahl, microwave furnace, dietary fibre and fat analysers and water activity meter. The Food Flavours Laboratory has facilities for development, evaluation and application of food ingredients and flavours in beverage, bakery, confectionery, culinary and dairy products. The Food Processing Laboratory houses a wide range of food processing equipment: line exhauster and seaming machines, spray dryers, ultra-filtration units, falling film evaporator, homogeniser, freeze dryer, pasteuriser, steriliser, fluidised-bed dryer, drum dryer and autoclave. The Food Quality and Sensory Evaluation Laboratory provides facilities for food product development and evaluation, using the experimental kitchen and sensory evaluation booths. Equipment available include high performance liquid chromatograph, flame atomic absorption, spectrophotometers, texture analyser, viscometers, bomb calorimeter, fatty acid analyser, ELISA and spectrophotometers. The General Chemistry Laboratory services the practicals carried out by firstyear students. This laboratory is equipped with fume hoods, basic instruments and equipment suitable for teaching the basic principles of Chemistry. The basic instruments and equipment are weighing balances, ovens, furnaces, aspirators and melting point tester. Quantitative and qualitative chemical analysis, titrations and functional group determinations are carried out in this laboratory. The Hybridoma Technology, Molecular Biology and Biochemistry Laboratories are equipped with a range of facilities for laboratory work in hybridoma technology, molecular biology, genetics and bioprocessing. Equipment available include CO2 incubators, low temperature freezer, fermenters for animal cell culture, DNA sequencer and thermal cyclers, peptide synthesizer, electrophoresis sets, ultracentrifuge, cryogenic vessels and biosafety cabinets. The Industrial Unit Operations Laboratory houses a wide range of well-instrumented pilot plants to provide the hands-on experience on equipment start-up, shutdown, and operations of separation and transfer processes. These pilot plants include the bubble-cap continuous distillation units, packed column absorption units with different packing materials, climbing film evaporator, shelland-tube and double-pipe heat exchangers, crystalliser, drying unit, pulse column liquid-liquid extraction unit, fluid flow through fittings unit and centrifugal pump operation unit. A real life pilot operation environment is created with the life-size multistage distillation pilot plant, equipped with Distributed Control System in the control room. The Instrumental Analysis Laboratories, provide students with practical experience in several instrumental techniques, e.g. UV-visible and atomic absorption spectrophotometry, fluorimetry, potentiometry, liquid and gas chromatography, luminescence, FTIR spectroscopy, GC-MS and capillary electrophoresis. The Medical Technology Suite shares purpose-built common facilities for practical and research work in the areas of clinical chemistry, haematology, histology, medical microbiology, immunology and molecular diagnostics. Equipment available include tissue processors, microtomes, spectrophotometers, autoanalysers, microplate readers, brightfield (single and multi-headed) and fluorescence microscopes, conventional and realtime thermal cyclers, pulsed field gel electrophoresis system, DNA sequencing system and flow cytometer. The Microbiology Laboratory, incorporating the Culture Collection Centre, provides facilities to support the curriculum on microbiology: total bacterial count, smear preparation and staining, sanitation testing and sterility studies. Available equipment include autoclaves, stomachers, blenders/homogenisers, laminar flow cabinets, low temperature incubators, shaker incubators, colony counters, water activity meter, ultra-violet steriliser, stereozoom microscopes and a cold room. The Microelectronics Chemistry Laboratory with a Class 1000 Clean Room Facility, has a full range of highly sophisticated equipment in the key areas of think film deposition, ultra-pure reagents analysis and certification, microcontamination and surface corrosion control. There is also a high vacuum DC/RF magnetron sputtering system for fabrication works. Other facilities include an ion chromatograph for anionic determination in water and other reagents, an ultrapure water delivery system for generating electronic-grade water used in the fabrication of semiconductor devices and solid-state sensors, a four-point probe for the measurement of electrical conductivity of epi-layers on silicon substrates and an optima video contact angle to measure the wetting properties of liquid. Singapore Polytechnic has two Optometry Centres which serve as clinical training facilities for finalyear Optometry students. There are 32 fully equipped consulting and special examination rooms. The facilities have colour vision tests, stereoscopic tests, tonometers, retinoscopes, direct and indirect ophthalmoscopes. Different types of contact lens trial sets and solutions are available for student use in clinical work. The Centres are open to the public for vision assessments and eye examinations. The Ocular Anatomy & Physiology Laboratory along with the Visual Science & Optics Laboratory and Project Laboratories provide multiple facilities to carry out experiments such as optics and physiological optics. Ten sets of light microscopes with one attached to a TV monitor enable more effective teaching in modules such as Ocular Anatomy and Ocular Physiology. The Packaging Laboratory houses a wide range of sophisticated testing and analysis equipment for paper, paperboard, plastic film, metallised film and metal cans. Equipment includes an Oxygen Permeation 122 Singapore Polytechnic Prospectus 2008/2009
SCHOOL OF Chemical and life sciences State-of-the-art facilities complement qualified and experienced staff. Detector, Water Vapour Transmission Rate Detector, Corrugated Crush Tester, Headspace Analyser, Video Can Seam Monitor System and Tabletting Press & Blister Packaging Machine. Students’ innovative prototypes of food packaging design are also displayed in the laboratory. The Plant Tissue Culture Laboratory has facilities for plant tissue culture work, with protoplast fusion equipment, an inverted microscope with a video attachment, laminar flow cabinets, controlled growth chambers and a clean room. Plant grow-out and plant nursery facilities are also available. The Polymer Characterisation Centre has a wide range of equipment for testing and characterisation of polymers, e.g. tensile testing, abrasion testing, melt flow index, impact strength testing, differential scanning calorimeter, thermogravimetric and thermomechanical analysers, dynamic mechanical analyser, torque rheometer, rheoscope and micro-FTIR. The Polymer Chemistry Laboratory provides facilities to carry out the various polymerisation reactions. Equipment available includes Gel Permeation Chromatograph, High Performance Liquid Chromatograph, Osmometer, High Speed Stirrer and Viscometers. The Polymer Processing Laboratory and Injection Moulding Centre house a wide range of equipment for the processing of plastics and rubber, e.g. integrated injection moulding, blow moulding, blown film extrusion, twin screw compounding, vacuum forming, multi-layer extrusion and material formulation. The Process Automation and Control Laboratory houses a full range of instrumentation. The laboratory provides hands-on experience on standard Process Instrumentation and Control Systems, e.g. sensors, transmitters and transducers; control of flow, level, pressure and temperature; PID controllers and control valves. Students are exposed to control strategies for pilot plant operations, e.g. process dynamic studies; feedback control; ratio control; cascade control; split range control; controller tuning. The laboratory also houses various pump circuits and a mixing pilot plant. Students get to study the operating characteristics and power requirement for the different pumps, and the effect of different impeller designs on mixing efficiency. The Reaction & Environmental Engineering Laboratory hosts the Reaction Engineering practicals with various chemical reactor pilot plants such as the jacketed chemical reactor featuring PC-based control system, continuous stirred tank reactor (CSTR), a plug flow tubular reactor (PFTR) and a pharmaceutical reaction unit with associated ultra-pure water production system. The laboratory is also home to several membrane-based pilot plants including a reverse osmosis unit, electrodialysis unit, and a cross-flow flux characterisation unit. The laboratory also houses final year student projects including a solid-liquid pharmaceutical crystal separator, a crystallisation unit and a duplex filtration system with clean-in-place facility. The Solarium has facilities for studying plant cultivation by solution culture, e.g. hydroponics and aeroponics, for both tropical and temperate plants. The Trace Analysis Laboratory provides facilities for trace analysis of ultra-pure reagents and gases. Instruments available include the ICP-MS, a GC-MS equipped with a headspace accessory, FTIR, and a Total Organic Carbon Analyser for the determination of both organic and inorganic carbon in water. The Vision Science Centre was completed in 2007 to incorporate the stateof-the-art training facilities for the Diploma in Optometry course, and to introduce a fresh approach to clinical teaching. The list of extensive facilities includes Clinical Optometry Learning Centre, Ophthalmic Dispensing Learning Centre and Vision Science Laboratories. Singapore Polytechnic Prospectus 2008/2009 123
Page 1 and 2: SCHOOL OF Chemical and life science
Page 15: SCHOOL OF Chemical and life science

CHEMICAL AND LIFE SCIENCES - Singapore Polytechnic

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?