Aqualog – Environmental Water Research Analyzer

Not just a scanning fluorometer for EEMs, but a much faster and better A-TEEM spectrometer for colored dissolved organic matter (CDOM)

The Aqualog is a unique optical spectrometer that is the gold standard in environmental water research around the world for the study of color dissolved organic matter (CDOM).

The Aqualog was invented to meet the needs of environmental water researchers around the world studying CDOM using fluorescence spectroscopy. At that time researchers were using scanning spectrofluorometers to slowly acquire a three dimensional matrix of the fluorescence excitation and fluorescence emission spectra, called an Excitation Emission Matrix (EEM). The EEM provides a fingerprint for studying dissolved organic matter, however it took up to an hour to collect a single EEM profile, tying the researcher to the lab bench for the entire day. The HORIBA Aqualog vastly improves the speed with which fluorescence EEMs are collected, dramatically increase the dynamic range across which EEM fingerprints are quantitative, and simultaneously acquires absorbance spectra for absorbance and color analysis of non-fluorescent molecules present in water. We call this technique that the Aqualog employs, an Absorbance-Transmission Excitation Emission Matrix, or A-TEEM^TM.

Today the Aqualog is used in some of the most prestigious water research labs, and remote locations, to study a variety of important research topics.