Analyzing contaminant and nutrient levels in drinking, surface and wastewater is a critical step in protecting aquatic habitats and maintaining safe drinking water supplies. However, traditional wet chemistry techniques are no longer the smartest approach.
If you’re seeking better ways to automate and simplify water and environmental sample analysis as well as regulatory compliance, these answers to the top seven questions will shed light on a better alternative.
1. What are the challenges associated with contaminant and nutrient analyses?
Traditional wet chemistry techniques — including titrations, flow injection analysis, and other colorimetric techniques — are slow, labor-intensive, often unreliable, and involve the use of hazardous reagents that add substantial costs for waste disposal. Wet chemistry tests are time- and skilled-labor-intensive because they require many sequential and complicated manual steps. These manual steps are potentially significant sources of error, reducing overall measurement accuracy.
2. Is there a better alternative to wet chemistry techniques?
Yes. With the advent of new discrete analyzer platforms, laboratories can tap into a highly accurate, efficient and easy-to-use water and nutrient analyses, while eliminating many of the drawbacks of traditional wet chemistry techniques. For example, the Thermo Scientific™ Gallery and Gallery Plus Aqua Master Discrete Analyzers are integrated and highly automated platforms that provide a turnkey alternative to traditional wet-chemistry methods, while also being faster and safer.
3. What are some of the benefits of Gallery and Gallery Plus discrete analyzers?
The platform delivers a high-throughput measurement of up to 20 parameters simultaneously, and every test is performed in a precise and predefined way. No user intervention is required once the pre-mixed, ready-to-use reagents are loaded into the instrument. The analyzers not only improve the reliability and sensitivity of results compared to manual techniques, but they also increase laboratory productivity by freeing staff to walk away and work on other value-added tasks. In addition, automated workflows eliminate the need to handle hazardous reagents, helping to protect the health and safety of laboratory staff.
4. Are the workflows verified to meet regulatory standards?
Yes, for analyses related to regulatory compliance, Gallery and Gallery Plus Aqua Master discrete analyzer workflows have been verified to meet the U.S. EPA-approved reference method requirements and international regulatory requirements for environmental wastewater and drinking water analysis. In particular, the analyzer’s advanced software provides sought-after features that enable laboratories to achieve a higher degree of workflow automation and usability when following the various regulated methods and international standards.
5. How do the software capabilities help my lab streamline workflows, comply with regulations and ensure walkaway efficiency?
The walkaway productivity of the Gallery and Gallery Plus Aqua Master discrete analyzers is supported by custom-designed software that performs required calibration orders and relative standard error (RSE) calculations, routine quality-control (QC) schemes, automated spiking, flexible reporting, and easy rerun of samples requiring new dilution factors. These are the five most sought-after features that enable laboratories to fully automate their testing workflows while following the appropriate local regulations. Even the most complicated spiking, calibration, and QC procedures can be fully automated using the Gallery and Gallery Plus Aqua Master discrete analyzers.
6. What about flexible results reporting?
The Gallery Aqua Master discrete analyzer software offers versatile capabilities for results reporting, including predefined and easily customizable report templates that can be accessed in the “Report editor” tab. The easy-to-use report editor allows customization of reports in both PDF and spreadsheet formats to meet laboratory needs. Reports can be organized by sample, batch or test. The default report templates provide fixed results column formats, while the customizable templates enable users to select the results columns to display. The report editor also allows customization of the header texts, logos used, and more.
7. What resources are available to help me learn more?
To learn more about the Gallery Aqua Master for wet chemical analysis, check out these online resources:
- See the Smart Note: How can the Gallery Aqua Master discrete analyzers simplify water and environmental sample analysis …
- Read the solution brochure
- Explore the informational web page
- Blog post: Analyzing Total Oxidized Nitrogen (TON) in Drinking Water? Simplify Your Method
- Knowledgebase post: 4 benefits of the Gallery Aqua Master discrete analyzers
- Knowledgebase post: 4 reasons to try a new approach to wet chemistry methods