Chemical Testing
Clients
Tweed Laboratory Centre offers a variety of chemical testing both Classical and instrumental. The laboratory provides this analytical service to Council and also to the Ratepayers (at a cost) and other external organisations such as consultants, universities and private companies.
This allows the Laboratory to earn money to
- purchase new equipment
- improve and expand the service offered to all levels of clients
- maintain the high standards required by a modern Laboratory facility
Water and Wastewater Chemistry
Water and Wastewater chemistry is an important aspect of processes employed by Tweed Shire Council in the treatment of water for drinking and the treatment of sewage. The liquid fraction from sewage, after treatment, can be returned to be used to water land such as Golf Courses and the solid portion used as a fertilizer after being mixed with soil and mulch.
To understand how these treatments work and how effective they may be requires that we monitor and analyse these materials during the process down to ionic level. We also need to understand their physical properties such as pH, Colour, Electrical Conductance etc.
Services
A range of services that we provide include:
- Nutrients
- Metals
- Physical testing (pH, conductivity etc)
- Oxygen demand etc.
- And More…
NATA accreditation
This analysis requires the use of a variety of instruments and techniques. It may also require that the Laboratory have accreditation by an authority to establish credibility.
All this said the ability to perform these tests in a reproducible and repetitive manner allows the Laboratory and the client to have faith in the results produced on a day-to-day basis. The accreditation by NATA is the final stamp on the process and procedures used. http://www.nata.com.au/
Tweed Shire Council employs the latest instrumentation and a number of experienced staff to achieve this level of precision and reproducibility.
Instrumentation
The Instrumentation includes:
- ICP-OES (inductively coupled Plasma optical emission spectrograph)
- GCMS (Gas chromatography Mass spectrometry)
- FIA (Flow injection Analyser)
- HPLC (High pressure liquid Chromatography)
- IC (Ion Chromatography)
- GFAAS (Graphite Furnace Atomic Absorption spectrograph)
- SIE (Specific Ion Electrodes)
These instruments, combined with classical techniques such as Titrimetric, Gravimetric and general wet chemistry allows the laboratory to provide a complete service covering a large area of expertise.