Environmental Research Institute

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ERI Sites

The ERI is lucky to operate from two sites in Thurso.

Castle Street is the original ERI site. The victorian school building was converted in 2000 to house the newly created ERI. By 2010 ERI had outgrown the space available here and the ERI expanded onto two sites. Castle street houses staff working in Biogeochemistry, Emerging Contaminants & Ecotoxicology and Biotechnology & Bioresources. Castle Street has offices, two laboratories and a conference room with VC facilities.

Castle Street offers the following analytical instrumentation:

• High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) coupled with a diverse range of Mass Spectrometers (triple quadrupole, time of flight and high capacity ion trap)
• Two HPLC systems with both Diode Array and Fluorescence Detection
• ICP-OES (Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectrometry) and Cathodic Stripping Voltammetry for metals analysis
• Gas Chromatography with flame ionisation, nitrogen-phosphorous and mass spectroscopic detectors
• Molecular biology facilities including real time PCR and denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis
• Stereoscopic Microscope & Digital Camera to enable viewing of specimens in a fresh state.

The Centre for Energy and Environment (CfEE) is a brand new purpose built building completed in January 2011, next to the North Highland College. The £3million CfEE was funded as part of the MaREE project by the EU Regional Development Fund, the Scottish Funding Council and Highlands and Islands Enterprise. The CfEE is home to staff working on Renewable Energy & the Environment, Climate Change and Ecology & Ecosystems. The CfEE has open plan office space, conference rooms, workshops and there are laboratories available for teaching.

The CfEE operates and maintains the following equipment:

• Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) with Energy Dispersive X-Ray Analysis (EDXA) allowing wet and non-conductive samples to be viewed in their original state
• Survey vessel "ERI Aurora"
• Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers (ADCP)
• CTD with PAR Sensor, Fluorometer and Dissolved Oxygen Probe. Nisken Bottles for sampling water at depth
• ROV