Laboratory Services

Fort Bend Services laboratory can assist you with your testing needs.  Contact Beau Champagne at bchampagne@fortbendservices.com

Water Analysis – Classical determination of cations and anions in a water sample, using an array of modern instruments.  All procedures are designed to conform to Standard Methods for Examination of Water and Wastewater.

• Cation species are determined by atomic absorption or emission spectroscopy with a Perkin-Elmer A-Analyst 400 spectroscope. Ions routinely determined include Sodium, Calcium, Magnesium, Iron, Copper, and a variety of less common metals when of interest.
• Anions are measured by ion chromatography, using a Dionex ICS-1500 Chromatograph. Fluoride, Chloride, Nitrite, Bromide, Nitrate, Phosphate and Sulfate are determined in this manner.
• Phosphate and Silicate species are measured photometrically, using a Shimadzu UV-1601 UV/Vis range spectrophotometer. Phosphonate and Azole methods can be used with a Hach DR-1900.

Deposit Analysis – Water-formed or water-related deposits are analyzed by a classical scheme involving drying, magnetism and acid reactivity, ignition, digestion, metals analysis, anion analysis, and resolution to relative precipitation potential.  This program can define most inorganic scale deposits and corrosion products found in equipment or piping exposed to water.  Photomicrographs included.

Corrosion Coupons – Cleaning, precision weight loss analysis and corrosion rate evaluation.  The procedures remove corrosion products without significant removal of base metal allowing an accurate determination of the mass loss of the metal or alloy that occurred during exposure to the corrosive environment.  Photomicrographs included.

Ion Exchange Resin Analysis –resins used for water pretreatment or waste material removal can suffer from fouling and normal aging.  We offer a series of test procedures which measure aging according to several parameters including capacity tests.  Other tests evaluate potential procedures for cleaning a fouled resin.  Photomicrographs included.

Environmental and Biological Testing – we maintain working relationships with EPA certified environmental laboratories in our home area, to perform tests which may include measures of organic pollutants in wastewater, biochemical or chemical oxygen demand, biomass identification, and determination of specific organisms such as coliform and Legionella bacteria.