General Water Quality Needs
The ESEI laboratories are outfitted with state-of-the-art analytical equipment capable of facilitating many standard water quality tests as well as carrying out cutting-edge environmental and chemical analyses. ESEI personnel have extensive experience with standard EPA and ASTM techniques.
The quality control-quality assurance plan for ESEI can be found here
Specific Analytical Applications
Applications of techniques that ESEI uses on a regular basis include:
Disinfection By Products and their Formation Potential. ESEI is capable of conducting formation potential analysis that can assist with prediction of disinfection byproducts (trihalomethanes, haloacetic acids) that form as a result of chlorination. Field water quality analysis, initial chlorine dissipation studies, and saturation pH determination all assist with determination of ideal chlorine dosing for a given source water. These chlorine doses can then be administered to samples of the source water, which can then be incubated at selected temperatures for fixed periods of time. After incubation, samples are then measured for DBP content on an Agilent 6890 Gas Chromatograph.
Figure 1. Agilent Technologies HP6890N Network Gas Chromatograph with 7683 autosampler and ECD detector
Dissolved Organic Carbon analysis. DOC provides insight on many topics, ranging from the presence of DBP precursors to the effectiveness of treatment processes, including coagulation and membrane filtration.
Figure 2. Tekmarr-Dohrmann Phoenix 8000 Total Carbon Analyzer
Spectroscopic Techniques
-
UV/Visible Spectroscopy
-
Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy (Flame, Electrothermal)
Figure 3. Hitachi Z9000 Electrothermal Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer for analysis of low-level metals