Water Quality Analysis

Water-wells are vertical shafts or holes used by mankind to obtain groundwater for drinking purposes and other uses. An analytical list for well water samples generally includes:

• Volatile organic compounds (VOCs)

• Semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOCs)

• Total and dissolved metals

• Ethylene glycol

• Acidity

• Alkalinity

• Total dissolved solids (TDS)

• Chloride

• pH

• Diesel- and gasoline-range organics (DRO and GRO)

• Methylene blue active substances (MBAS)

• Total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH)

Reports showed that there are about 1.2 billion people lacking access to safe drinking water around the world. Therefore, it is necessary to assure the safety of our drinking water. There are various drinking water standards. The key variables are as follows:

• Organoleptic parameters: color, turbidity, odor, and taste

• Physical and chemical parameters: temperature, pH, conductivity, dissolved oxygen, dissolved solids, chlorides, sulfate, aluminum, potassium, silica, calcium, magnesium, sodium, alkalinity, hardness, and free carbon dioxide (CO₂)

• Parameters concerning undesirable substances: nitrate, ammonium, total organic carbon (TOC), hydrogen sulfide, phenols, dissolved hydrocarbons, iron, manganese, suspended solids, and chlorinated organic compounds other than pesticides

• Parameters concerning toxic substances such as arsenic, mercury, lead, and pesticides

• Microbiological parameters: total coliforms, fecal coliforms, fecal streptococci, sulfite-reducing clostridium, and total bacterial count

Watersheds are land areas that channel water to a particular location, such as a river, lake, ocean or other body of water. The main pollution of river pollution is organic pollution, and the main pollutants are ammonia nitrogen, biochemical oxygen demand, permanganate index and volatile phenol, etc. The lake is characterized by its eutrophication, main pollution indexes are total phosphorus, total nitrogen, chemical oxygen demand and high manganese salts index, etc. The main pollution indices in inshore area are inorganic nitrogen, active phosphate and heavy metals.

The composition of wastewater, stormwater and runoff varies widely. A partial list of pollutants that may be contained in them as follows:

• Heavy metals, including mercury, lead, and chromium

• Soluble inorganic material such as ammonia, road-salt, sea-salt, cyanide, hydrogen sulfide, thiocyanates, thiosulfates

• Gases such as hydrogen sulfide, carbon dioxide, methane

• Toxins such as pesticides, poisons, herbicides

• Pharmaceuticals and hormones and other hazardous substances

• Thermal pollution from power stations and industrial manufacturers

• Bacteria (for example Salmonella, Shigella, Campylobacter, Vibrio cholerae)

• Viruses (for example hepatitis A, rotavirus, enteroviruses)

• Protozoa (for example Entamoeba histolytica, Giardia lamblia, Cryptosporidium parvum)

Wastewater refers to the general term for water and runoff rainwater discharged during the activities of residents. It includes domestic sewage, industrial wastewater and other rainwater inflow into the drainage pipe and other non-water, generally refers to water that cannot be recycled after a certain technical treatment or that does not meet certain standards after the first-stage pollution. Sludge is a product of sewage treatment and is an extremely complex heterogeneous body composed of organic residues, bacterial cells, inorganic particles, colloids and the like. The main characteristics of the sludge are high water content (up to 99% or more), high organic content, easy to rot and odor, and finer particles, smaller specific gravity, and a gelatinous liquid state. Alfa Chemistry provides professional testing and analysis services for wastewater, seawater, sediment, and sludge products to help customers understand the sample indicators and ingredients.

For the above reasons and applications, our company provides advanced instruments and customized methods for water quality analysis. Generally speaking, advanced methods require the use of analytic instruments that can measure several parameters at the same time such as gas (GC) and liquid (LC) chromatographies with different detectors such as flame ionization detector (FID), electron capture detector (ECD), mass spectrometry (MS), and ultraviolet detector (UV). They are used to analyze water for specialized chemicals such as pesticides, perfluorinated organic compounds (PFCs), and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). These chemicals are usually present at low concentrations in water and they are usually toxic. Special pretreatment is usually needed for concentrating these chemicals in an organic solvent or on a solid phase that can be used to thermally release the chemicals in the injection port of the analytic instrument. In case the analysis is performed to identify unknown organic compounds in water, more specialized techniques are needed such as GC MS/MS and LC MS/MS. There are also advanced techniques that allow simultaneous analysis of several metals (inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry, ICP-MS, and inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry, ICP-OES) or ions (ion chromatography, IC) at rather low concentrations.