Innovation Award for Remediation Technology
On 20th April 2010 the winners of The Environment and Energy Awards 2010 were announced at a black tie dinner as part of Sustainabilitylive! at the National Motorcycle Museum in Birmingham. The event, compared by Alun Cochrane and organised by Faversham House Group, saw the best of green industry rewarded for their initiative and environmental thinking throughout the last year.
Presented by Professor Jim Lynch. OBE Distinguished Professor of Life Sciences (Emeritus), QROS won the prestigious Innovation Award for Remediation Technology 2010 for QED its novel hydrocarbon analyser. As remediation is a complex procedure subject to a great deal of legislation this award rewards the companies who are developing innovative and ground breaking technologies to tackle environmental land issues. This award recognises high quality service that not only provides value for money but also has relevant environmental benefits.
Recognising the need for a quantitative and informative on-site analysis for hydrocarbon contaminated soil and water, QROS developed QED. British built and designed, QED hydrocarbon Analyser is unique in being able to identify as well as quantify the type of hydrocarbon in the sample. This allows the analytical quantitation to be more accurate than other on-site hydrocarbon analysers. QED will provide data for TPH, DRO, Sum of the 16 PAHs, Total Aromatics, monoaromatics (BTEX), Benzo-a-Pyrene and naphthalene in minutes.
By measuring various energies emitted by a sample exposed to several different excitation energies, QED's built in software rapidly generates characteristic fingerprints that easily identifies the type of hydrocarbon contamination present in the sample. This is a similar feature to a GC trace, however in the case of GC traces significant experience and training are required to even tentatively identify the hydrocarbon type, and laboratories are generally reluctant to pass this information on to their clients. Accordingly using QED a trained operator is able to easily identify if the hydrocarbon is predominantly diesel, fuel oil, creosote, coal tar, pyrogenic material or lubricating oil, and even give some indication as to how weathered the contaminant is. This identification of the proper contaminant type means that the most appropriate calibration type can be used to generate the most accurate results. This feature is a significant improvement on standard laboratory practise which simply uses typical standard fuel hydrocarbon calibrants (BTEX, DRO and a mineral oil)
Using the instrument on-site brings additional benefits, not least being that the immediate feedback of information allows real-time delineation of hot spots and contaminant plumes, and the opportunity for environmental professionals to increase the sampling density as required with very little extra financial cost. It also means that site management decisions with regards to disposal and/or treatment options can be made far more readily and confidently. It further means that only truly contaminated material need be sent to hazardous waste landfills, thus minimising contractors' costs for disposal (ca. £3000 per lorry load for hazardous waste) and valued landfill space. Using laboratory only based analysis will generally mean lower density sampling rates and may blanket condemn only partially contaminated material or conversely even miss contamination hot spots all together. It has been demonstrated by studies by Professor Michael Ramsey from the University of Sussex and others that higher sampling densities save money by providing a significantly improved confidence in the overall conclusions that can be drawn from site investigations or remediation. Even the Environment Agency recognises the significant economic and environmental advantages of using on-site techniques suggesting that they have an important role to play supporting MCerts data for regulatory decisions (Policy Number: 307_03). QED has been evaluated by several agencies around the world and has recently even been adopted by the US Navy as one of their preferred methods for on-site analysis for hydrocarbons.
In addition to the advantages of QED as an instrument, the services offered by QROS have other financial and environmental benefits.
The first of these is the nature of the material used to extract the sample. The solvent used is methanol, also known as wood alcohol, it is a natural and sustainable product, and being readily biodegradable it is used in the production of biodiesel and as a carbon neutral fuel in its own right. Conversely most laboratory analysis on hydrocarbon samples involves the use of solvent mixtures containing environmentally detrimental compounds such as DCM or acetone. QED also uses a single extract to provide both TPH and PAH data, whereas a laboratory will use greater amounts of solvents, often preparing two separate extracts using different solvents and preparative methods to provide the same data. This in itself can lead to disparities between the reported PAH and TPH concentrations with laboratories occasionally reporting higher PAH concentrations than TPH concentration even under MCerts analysis!
As QED is designed for use in the field it negates the need for heating and maintaining expensive infrastructure such as laboratories as well as the associated environmental and financial costs of transporting heavy cool boxes back to such off-site facilities. Also reduced is the use of specialised sample containers (e.g. amber jars) as soil samples can be directly into the extraction containers.
In terms of financial costs, QED is economical relative to laboratory analysis. If 10 samples are analysed during the course of a day this will cost just £680. A laboratory, taking some 2-3 weeks to provide the results will charge over £1000. If 20 samples are analysed in the day, this will cost just £760 compared to over £2000 if the same number of samples are analysed by the laboratory. Given that just 7 trial pits generates on average 21 samples, the cost benefits of QED become clear very quickly.
In summary whilst QED is currently being introduced into laboratories as a screening tool, its use on site means that site decisions can be made in real time, increased sampling densities can be achieved at reduced cost, less materials are required (solvents, sample containers etc.) less infrastructure and the commensurate energy demands that come with it. Yet the unequalled rapid information provided by QED means the end user is best informed to make real time confident site management decisions.
By measuring various energies emitted by a sample exposed to several different excitation energies, QED's built in software rapidly generates characteristic fingerprints that easily identifies the type of hydrocarbon contamination present in the sample. This is a similar feature to a GC trace, however in the case of GC traces significant experience and training are required to even tentatively identify the hydrocarbon type, and laboratories are generally reluctant to pass this information on to their clients. Accordingly using QED a trained operator is able to easily identify if the hydrocarbon is predominantly diesel, fuel oil, creosote, coal tar, pyrogenic material or lubricating oil, and even give some indication as to how weathered the contaminant is. This identification of the proper contaminant type means that the most appropriate calibration type can be used to generate the most accurate results. This feature is a significant improvement on standard laboratory practise which simply uses typical standard fuel hydrocarbon calibrants (BTEX, DRO and a mineral oil)
Using the instrument on-
In addition to the advantages of QED as an instrument, the services offered by QROS have other financial and environmental benefits.
The first of these is the nature of the material used to extract the sample. The solvent used is methanol, also known as wood alcohol, it is a natural and sustainable product, and being readily biodegradable it is used in the production of biodiesel and as a carbon neutral fuel in its own right. Conversely most laboratory analysis on hydrocarbon samples involves the use of solvent mixtures containing environmentally detrimental compounds such as DCM or acetone. QED also uses a single extract to provide both TPH and PAH data, whereas a laboratory will use greater amounts of solvents, often preparing two separate extracts using different solvents and preparative methods to provide the same data. This in itself can lead to disparities between the reported PAH and TPH concentrations with laboratories occasionally reporting higher PAH concentrations than TPH concentration even under MCerts analysis!
As QED is designed for use in the field it negates the need for heating and maintaining expensive infrastructure such as laboratories as well as the associated environmental and financial costs of transporting heavy cool boxes back to such off-
In terms of financial costs, QED is economical relative to laboratory analysis. If 10 samples are analysed during the course of a day this will cost just £680. A laboratory, taking some 2-
In summary whilst QED is currently being introduced into laboratories as a screening tool, its use on site means that site decisions can be made in real time, increased sampling densities can be achieved at reduced cost, less materials are required (solvents, sample containers etc.) less infrastructure and the commensurate energy demands that come with it. Yet the unequalled rapid information provided by QED means the end user is best informed to make real time confident site management decisions.
