Laboratory of Sanitary and Environmental Engineering (LSA)

LSA has infrastructure for teaching, research and extension activities that involve physical, chemical and microbiological analyzes of water, wastewater, solid waste and their derivatives. It has two laboratories for physical and chemical analyses, a microbiology laboratory, a laboratory for assembling bench reactors, an ecotoxicology room (for maintaining test organisms and carrying out short-term tests), a reagents room, a warehouse, a support shed for work in the external area, as well as a classroom. The laboratories have a variety of glassware, reagents and various materials including: tube and bottle shakers, automatic sampler (for liquid samples capacity 12 liters), jar test device, automatic total organic carbon analyzer (Shimadzu), multiparameter probes (pH, OD, conductivity), vertical autoclave, analytical scales (0.0001 g), digital scales up to 500g, Dubnoff, water and ultrasonic baths, digital burettes, photoperiod cultivation chambers, gas exhaust and laminar flow hoods, centrifuge bench (4000 rpm) and refrigerated ultracentrifuge, heating plates, conductivity meters, pH meters and bench turbidimeters, nitrogen distillers, UV/visible spectrophotometers, incubator ovens for BOD, for microbiological culture and for sterilization and drying, incubator with orbital shaking, microplate reader (ELISA), Soxhlet fat extractor (AOAC, 2000), ball mill, blender industrial, shaking tables, inverted microscope, muffle furnaces, bench pH meters, automatic pipettes, water purifiers (reverse osmosis), electronic sealing machine, digester block and thermoreactors. In the external area, LESA has a cemented composting yard, for setting up experiments with an aerated composting chamber. It also has an effluent treatment and algal biomass production unit with twelve high-rate lagoons and two pilot-scale algal biofilm reactors and 10 high-rate lagoons and 9 bench-scale algal biofilm reactors.

Despite the existing structure, some analyzes for the material produced are carried out in other laboratories at the University, which has increasingly led its users (IC, master’s and doctorate students) to interact with other laboratories, in other departments, such as example the Biofuels Laboratory (DEA); Wood Panels and Energy Laboratory (LAPEM); Biopharmaceutical Laboratory (DBB); Forage Farming and Silage Microbiology Laboratory (DZO) Simulation, Projects and Catalysis Laboratory (LaSiP); Scanning Electron Microscopy Laboratory (DPF); X-ray Diffraction Laboratory (DPF) and several of the existing laboratories at DPS (Plant Analysis, Atomic Absorption Spectrometry, Soil Fertility, Fertilizers, Soil Physics, Soil Fertility Routine, Stable Isotopes, among others). There is also a partnership with the Environmental Microbiology Laboratory at the Federal University of São Carlos – Sorocaba Campus.

LESA is sought out by other departments to carry out analyzes only carried out there, or even for the interaction that teachers and users have. Students of veterinary medicine, biology…

Companies and municipalities look for the laboratory to carry out analyzes on samples of water, wastewater, solid waste, as well as to provide other types of services with the lines of research developed there.