University of Alaska Fairbanks SCHOOL OF FISHERIES AND OCEAN SCIENCES  
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FITC building

Located in Kodiak, Alaska, at the center of Alaska's fishing industry, FITC is a 20,000 square foot, state-of-the-art research facility.

Facilities

The UAF School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences Fishery Industrial Technology Center is located in Kodiak, Alaska, the state's second largest commercial fishing port. Fishermen deliver about 300 million pounds of seafood to Kodiak processing plants each year, including salmon, pollock, cod, crab, and other critters from the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea.

The Alfred Owen Building

The Alfred Owen Building, where FITC is housed, is a 20,000 ft2 two-story structure built in 1991.

The facility consists of a central office complex, 14 faculty offices and a large and a small conference room.

Other facilities include a sensory testing facility, a research kitchen, a 1,000 ft2 storage building, and a 5,000 ft2 Pilot Plant.

Specialized research is usually done in one of FITC’s four dedicated function - research laboratories, each around 500 ft2, and each equipped with one or more fume hoods. These include engineering, chemistry, biochemistry, and microbiology.

The Owen Building has a high capacity Local Area Netowrk (LAN) and all computers in the building are connected to the Internet via a Wide Area Network (WAN) operated by the University of Alaska Office of Information Technology (OIT).

Central Office Complex

The central office complex has FAX, copying, and postal services as well as up-to-date common use computers for visitors connected to the Internet via LAN. FITC has a small Seafood Processing library consisting of more than 500 volumes of books and monographs and about 15 years of back issues of the 25 journals that are subscribed to. Other research information can be accessed from the Fairbanks campus through Internet connections.

Our facilities include:


Seafood research lab

  • Custom designed Machine Vision system
  • Minolta Hunter Color Analyzer,
  • Labconco Freeze Dry - Shell Freeze System,
  • Texture Technologies TA - HDi Texture Analyzer,
  • Perkins Elmer DSC-7 Differential Scanning Calorimeter,
  • Quantichrome Mutli-pycnometer,
  • Sun Kagaku Food Checker,
  • Revco -80°C Freezer,
  • Sorvall High Speed Centrifuge

Chemistry lab

We have the following major laboratory equipment:

  • Agilant 6890 CG with a M-5973 mass spectroscopy detector (MSD),
  • Agilant HP-7694 Headspace Autosampler,
  • Agilant Model 6850 CG- with an integral flame ionization detector (FID),
  • Agilant 5182-3482 Hydrogen Gas Generator, Beckman L8M Ultracentrifuge,
  • Biorad Versidoc 1000 Digital Image Analyzer,
  • Buchi Automated Kjeldahl Nitrogen Analyzer,
  • Consolidated Steromaster Mark II Autoclave,
  • Hewlett Packard 5890 GC-FID,
  • Iatroscan TH-10 TLC -FID Free Fatty Acid Analyzer,
  • Iatroscan Mk-6s Lipid Class Analyzer,
  • LECO FP-2000 Protein Analyzer,
  • LECO FA-100 Fats Analyzer,
  • Sterigard III Laminar Flow Biohazard Hood,
  • Waters 2690 HPLC with model 474 Fluorescence Detector and a 2487 Dual l Absorbance Detector.

Biochemistry lab

  • Leica Z16 Dissecting Makroscope
  • Nikon Optiphot Compound Microscope with DIC and Epifluorescence
  • Sorvall MT 1 Ultramicrotome
  • Applied Biosystems GeneAmp PCR System 9700
  • Labconco Purifier PCR Enclosure
  • Gilson Minipuls 3 Peristaltic Pump
  • Beckmann L8M ultracentrifuge

Microbiology lab

Pilot plant

The FITC Pilot plant is equipped to handle many forms of Seafood Processing. Available utilities in the Pilot Plant include 100 psi air pressure, low (15 psi) and medium pressure (85 psi) live steam, hot and cold water. Available electrical service includes 110v and 220v single phase, 208v triple phase, as well as 240v and 480v triple phase.

The Pilot Plant has an array of state of the art processing equipment including:

  • AHS Custom designed pelletizer,
  • AHS pilot scale batch hydrolyzing system,
  • Armfield FT 40 Multipurpose Processing Vessel,
  • ASTA Hydrolyzer (on lease),
  • Brown Model 3900 finisher (deboner),
  • Dole Freeze-Cel plate freezer,
  • Groen / Dover Model DLT-40 steam pot,
  • Hobart Model A-200-D1 mixer,
  • Koch RVF 55 Vacuum Stuffer,
  • Koch SR1 dicer,
  • Littleford Model FM 130-0 vacuum dryer,
  • Nissan Model 30 forklift,
  • Urschel Model 1700 Comitrol and Virtis Genesis Lyophilizer
  • Custom designed supercritical CO2 extraction unit.

Additionally, various other pertinent equipment are available, including a screw press, grinders, mixers, packaging machinery, pumps for high viscosity material, dry pumps, a canning seamer, a laboratory retort, and an EnviroPak smoker.

Conference room

  The FITC Large Conference Room has state of the art video conferencing and presentation equipment. The room has a capacity of 40 persons. Some of the equipment include:

  • Tandberg Educator MXP video conference system -Panasonic 50” Plasma Display
  • 8 ft x 8 ft projection screen
  • NEC LT380 ceiling mounted projector
  • dedicated 3 Ghz Windows Computer for presentations
  • Sony DVD/VCR combination Player/Recorder
  • Pioneer 100W Receiver with 4 room speakers
  • wireless microphone for presentations, video conferencing
  • Elmo Visual Presenter/Document Camera

Taste panel facility

Freezer capacity

Fish and Seafood Processing by-products are stored in three freezers with a total area of 1,200 ft2 located off a large 300 ft2 cold room. FITC also has sufficient ice from FITC’s flake ice device (1 ton per day capacity) to stabilize large volumes of fish or processing by-products.

Student apartments

UAF has access to an apartment complex located next door belonging to the Kodiak Island Borough. Four 1-bedroom and 2 two-bedroom apartments are available for visitors and students.