Last week I
had a change to visit a brand new Polli laboratory of the Estonian University
of Life Sciences together with our student Elmo. The Polli lab is located in
Southern-Estonia near Karksi-Nuia and surrounded by breathtaking landscape with
hills and lakes. The Polli laboratory is unique in Estonia as it combines
equipment suitable for small scale industrial testing as well as high
competence analytical laboratory.
The
analytical laboratory is equipped, in addition to other high-tech instruments
(including LC/MS etc), with a SFC/MS (super critical fluid chromatography –
mass spectrometry) instrument which can be online coupled with SFE (super
critical fluid extraction) instrument. The aim of this high-tech lab is to
support the development of functional foods produced in Estonia but also to
provide research on the functional components of natural products.
The
industrial part contains several extraction instrumentation – microwave
extraction, supercritical fluid extraction, pressurised liquid extraction - as
well as different mixers, lyophilizators, sieves, etc. The extraction equipment
is specially chosen so that it would allow production of extracts of functional
components for small batches of foodstuff. Also Polli hosts a small lab space
for companies interested in applications of functional components in non-foods
– such as cosmetics etc.
According
to the impression I got from the visit Polli lab is open-minded for different
collaborations! Hope that our lab can do some collaborative project soon as we
don’t have SFC instrumentation ourself yet and I would also encourage others to
investigate the possibilities for collaboration with such nicely equipped
centre.
Website of Polli lab: http://www.plantvalor.ee/index.php/home/
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