News

13/05/15 | Initial contact from Rob requesting equipment for Mongolia

As a quick background, Rob Clegg had made some donations to RORO in the past when he worked for Butterworths labs.  This is Rob's email to us outline his project proposal that was later put to the RORO board of trustees:-

Hi Giles,

I just had a little moment where i did a bit of a fist air punch thing looking at your website and from what i can tell, please correct me if I’m wrong, that old Perkin Elmar paragon 1000 FT-IR from when i worked at Butterworths actually got shipped out to South Sudan?

One of the reasons i decided to look up RORO again is that I’m about leave on a Australian Volunteers for International Development (AVID) assignment to spend a year of my life housed inside the National University of Mongolia (NUM). AVID is the Australian equivalent to VSO in the UK and is likewise aimed at injecting skills into developing countries by funding professional volunteering positions.

My assignment is as a analytical chemist to provide some technical assistance to NUM to help them develop some improved pollution monitoring procedures to help combat the significant pollution problem in Ulaanbaatar for which i am told, and am about to experience, is relatively extreme.

I have just started dialogue with NUM and am looking at starting up some organic analysis of aerosol filter samples for poly aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) by HPLC. I have limited direct experience with this specific test but following up some brief talks with colleges i have learnt that although analysis of some PAHs by HPLC is indeed possible the normal choice of instrument is GC-FID or GC-MS.

Im continuing to learn more on PAHs analysis and you are the only people i know in the reuse of analytical equipment and I’m wondering if you have anything that could help NUM develop there pollution monitoring program, or even perhaps there teaching program?

Cheers,

Rob