Professor Christelle Goutaudier, vice-president for Mathematical, Matter, Engineering and Social Human Sciences at the Université Claude Bernard-Lyon 1 (UCBL), and Mr. Olivier Duclos, research engineer at UCBL’s “Hydrazines et Procédés” Laboratory, visited the Faculty on a research mission from September 7 to September 11, 2008.

The visit aimed to collaborate to the elaboration of a methodology to measure very low solubility in pure water of hydrophobic, petrogenic and/or xenobiotic organic molecules ( (10-6 in molar fraction), and to validate this methodology through a solubility study in water of ethylbenzene, an aromatic molecule, compared to the data cited in the specialised literature with a relative margin of error below 3%. The intended course of action is to adapt the experimental mechanism to reach levels of solubility in water on the nano-molar scale and define the quantity of organic elution solvent in order to avoid emiction problems in the extraction column, in addition to thermo-analytical optimisation of detection and quantification conditions, the determination of Heidman’s thermodynamic equation and the determination of thermodynamic transfer magnitudes in pure water/mineral water/salted water systems.

Mrs. Goutaudier delivered a lecture titled “hydrogen stocking in alkaline borohydrides. Thermodynamics of systems and optimization of efficiency.”