HTBLA Wels is a higher technical vocational college of chemistry in Austria. Here, Dr Harald Baumgartner is responsible for the instrumental analytical laboratory. The lab’s main focus is to teach students the basics of NMR (interpretation of spectra).

Dr Baumgartner says “Compared to the old 60 MHz spectrometer, the Magritek Spinsolve benchtop spectrometer is so much easier to use. It is software-based so collecting and processing data is quite straightforward. As well as ¹H spectra, our Spinsolve allows us to measure more complex spectra including ¹³C-spectra. Even 2-dimensional experiments are now available to the students.”

Starting this year, all the students have to do their own practical work towards their thesis. This may be in the field of synthetic organic chemistry so NMR is used to determine the chemical structures of the materials the students synthesize. In other experiments, the course offers quantitative analytics (e.g. determination of the iodine number of vegetable oils) and kinetic studies.