What Are Greenhouse Gases, How Many Types Are There, and Which Instrument Do You Need to Measure Them?
Greenhouse gases are gases in the atmosphere that absorb and emit infrared radiation. This traps part of the heat instead of letting it dissipate. For organizations that must report emission figures, the definition is only the start. The next question is how to get those figures: use default values that others have already calculated, or […]
Factory Effluent Standards: Which Parameters to Report and How Each One Is Measured
Factories that must report effluent quality face the same questions every year: which parameters are worth running in their own lab, which should be sent out, and where automated analyzers can actually help. This article does not set out to copy the table of standard limits for you yet again, since it is easy to […]
Sample Preparation for Analysis: How to Choose Digestion and Extraction Methods for Consistent Results
Sample preparation shapes the quality of analytical results more than many people think. It splits into two routes, depending on the analyte and the matrix being analyzed. The first route is digestion, for elemental analysis by ICP-OES, ICP-MS or AAS. Closed-vessel microwave digestion gives higher and more uniform temperatures than digestion on a hot plate, […]
Moisture Analysis Looks Simple… but It Can Give Inaccurate Results Without You Noticing
Does this sound familiar? • Repeat measurements give different values • The same sample, measured on different days, gives different results • Results take so long that QC decisions come too late Often, these problems are not caused by the person doing the measurement. They come from “the nature of the sample” and “the analytical […]
Measuring Soil Greenhouse Gases for Agricultural Carbon Credits: Which Instruments Do You Need?
Measuring soil greenhouse gases for agricultural carbon credit projects serves two important purposes that occasional spot sampling cannot. The first is measurement continuity, enough to capture the peaks that follow changes in external conditions, such as after rain or after fertilizer application. The second is the ppb-level precision of continuous measurement data, which can be […]