AWE International | Issue 29
Automatic Weather Stations [Mar 2012]
Siting, exposure and calibration Automatic Weather Stations (AWS) are becoming increasingly popular in many applications owing to their becoming more affordable, reliable, having improved data logging capabilities and through the growth in personal computing bringing sophisticated data manipulation and archiving within the reach of all.
Environmental Analysis Focusing on Metals [Mar 2012]
Testing for a suite of metals is one of the most common requests received by environmental laboratories, and is generally perceived as straightforward and simple to understand. This is actually a complex area, however, with some misconceptions relating to the analysis and how data should be interpreted.
Mass Spectrometry [Mar 2012]
Mass spectrometry in environmental applications Introduction In the mid 80s I worked in a research lab which was on the immediate north bank of Melbourne’s Yarra River. The ‘mass spec’ we had there, which was by that time elderly and had been modified several times, had become troublesome to a degree that the Chief of the lab had, he told me himself, been tempted to throw it into the Yarra. Happily that did not happen and, with the aid of an exceptionally skilled instrumentation engineer, my technician and I were able to obtain a few more productive years of service from it. Mass spectrometry in its various forms provides peaks corresponding to mass number interpretation of which is the basis of analysis. In the work referred to in the previous paragraph, we were concerned with pyrolysis products from coal, and these include carbon monoxide, molecular weight 28. This precluded the use of nitrogen as a background gas, since its molecular weight is also 28, so the response of the mass spectrometer to that would have totally concealed that due to any carbon monoxide formed. Instead we had to use argon, much more expensive than nitrogen, the signal from which was at mass number 40. Applications of mass spectrometry to environmental matters have been so numerous that lengthy review articles could be written on them and, indeed, have been. This article will comprise selected examples of such use, with emphasis on interpretation of spectra.
Measuring Our Environment [Mar 2012]
Keeping pace with technology Jane Burston of the National Physical Laboratory explains why the development of a measurement infrastructure is vital to mitigating climate change.
Measuring Stack Gas Emissions [Mar 2012]
The use of FTIR instruments The Environment Agency has issued Technical Guidance Note (TGN) M22, within its series of monitoring TGNs, to provide guidance on necessary requirements when using manual extractive Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopic instruments to measure emissions of pollutants from industrial stacks. It is not applicable to FTIR used for continuous emissions monitoring.
Waste Water Treatment
Aerobic versus anaerobic treatment When compared to other alternatives for treating industrial effluents, suchas aerobic effluent treatment, anaerobic processes have significant environmental and financial advantages for achieving industrial compliance.
Waste Water Treatment [Mar 2012]
Challenges in Pathogen Detection in Waste Water Abstract To predict the efficiency of water treatment processes in the removal of protozoa cysts and oocysts, it is necessary to detect the parasites, measure their concentration in water and determine whether they have the capability of being infectious.
