Dr. Ellery D. Ingall

	Associate Professor School of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta, GA 30332-0340 Office 2130 Ford Environmental Science & Technology Building
Telephone	404/894-3883
Fax	404/894-5638
E-mail	ellery.ingall@eas.gatech.edu

The primary emphasis of my research is understanding marine productivity through studies of carbon and the key nutrient elements phosphorus and nitrogen.

Current research includes:

Development, testing, and application of a process using reverse osmosis in combination with electrodialysis for the concentration and practical retrieval of significant quantities of essentially unaltered dissolved organic matter (DOM) from seawater. The large size and dynamics of the ocean dissolved organic matter pool have made it an important focus of many studies of global elemental cycles. Preliminary results suggest the electrodialysis technique in combination with reverse osmosis methods will be able to recover greater than 80% of the dissolved organic matter in seawater including small molecules. Analysis of DOM recovered by this technique will yield vital clues to understanding carbon and nutrient cycles.

Another general theme of my research has been the application of spectroscopic methods such as nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and XANES (X-ray Absorption Near Edge Structure) to study the composition and cycling of phosphorus and carbon. Recently, I have been funded by NSF to develop a new technique, phosphorus x-ray spectromicroscopy, to examine redox sensitive phosphorus cycling. With phosphorus x-ray spectromicroscopy we can chemically characterize samples in quantities 2 orders of magnitude smaller than those used for NMR and can distinguish different P containing mineral, organic and inorganic phases by their spectral features.