In the world of environmental testing, many labs encounter extremely dirty samples. For example, EPA Method 1664B is the protocol for extracting oil and grease from wastewater samples. More often than not, these types of samples are really dirty, requiring loads of pre-filters, glass wool, and filter aid in order to get the entire liter of water through the disk. Well, there is!
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Have you ever had days of extracting oil and grease samples and thought to yourself “there must be an easier way to work with wastewater samples”? Whether you run oil and grease samples by liquid-liquid extraction (LLE) or by solid-phase extraction (SPE) it can be challenging at times to efficiently extract 1-liter samples due to the sample matrix.
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It is that time of year again when laboratories are fulfilling accreditation requirements for the methods that they offer. One of the requirements that must be met for each method is called proficiency testing (PT).
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On the surface, EPA Method 1664B seems pretty straightforward – use n-hexane to extract compounds (commonly referred to as “oil and grease”) from an acidified water sample. Evaporate the hexane from the extract, weigh the residue that gets left behind, and report that weight in terms of a concentration (often as mg/L of HEM).
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Have you ever opened a jar of olives and noticed the shimmering liquid floating on the surface? Believe it or not, that liquid is actually residual oil that is given off by the olives themselves.
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When in the lab I always try to streamline and improve workflows. One of the biggest bottlenecks in the lab I’ve experienced and maybe you have too, is the drying of sample extracts.
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