Meeting Notice
Spring meeting of the Pennsylvania Association of Accredited Environmental Laboratories, Inc. to be held in State College, Pennsylvania
Date and Location
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Ramada Inn, 1450 South Atherton St., State College, PA 16801 (814) 238-3001
Registration Fee
Member registrations are $60. All 2012 dues must be paid in full to register as a member. Cost for non-members is $70. Lunch is included.
Register online
Return Notices
You must let us know by Wednesday, June 6th if you plan to attend. Reservations may be phoned, faxed, or pre-paid to the association office at the above address. Pre-paid registrants, who fail to attend and do not cancel by Thursday, June 7th, do not receive a refund. You may send a substitute. We accept Visa®, MasterCard, Discover, or American Express.
Directions
From I-80: Take Exit 161 (Bellefonte). Follow PA 220 South for 13 miles. Take Exit 74, merge to right and then take the left exit, Park Ave. Stay on Park Ave. until you get to Beaver Stadium on your left. Turn left onto University Drive until it intersects with Atherton Street (Business Rt. 322). Turn right at the red light. The Ramada is approximately ¼ mile on the left.
From Harrisburg: Take US 322/22 West past Lewistown to the Boalsburg exit. The Ramada is located four miles ahead on the left.
Lodging
Overnight accommodations are the responsibility of the registrant. The Ramada Inn has extended a corporate rate of $70.00 until May 10th. You may make reservations by calling (814) 238-3001. When you call, please tell them you are with PaAAEL.
Agenda
| 9:00 am | Registration: coffee and danish |
| 9:30 am | Presentation on Current Information for Pennsylvania State Laboratories |
| 10:30 am | Anne Jurek, from EST Analytical will present “Automated Sampling of Dissolved Gas Water Samples.” With the increase in the price of oil over the past several years, tapping the natural gas reservoirs throughout the US has become a viable solution for energy independence. Until recently, however, getting to these gas reservoirs was very difficult. Now, through the development of horizontal drilling in conjunction with hydraulic fracturing or “fracking”, these reservoirs have become much easier to tap for natural gas. The process of fracking involves drilling thousands of feet below the earth’s surface and injecting the ground with millions of gallons of water, sand, and chemicals. After the well is completed, the fracturing fluid or “flow back water” is captured in steel tanks or lined pits. There are some environmental concerns with the fracking process that have come to light as fracking has gained popularity. One major concern is the natural gas migrating into drinking water sources. In order to test for dissolved gases, the RSK-175 method was developed. This method involves some manual preparation of the water samples before the water can be analyzed. As manual preparation is very time consuming, there has been increased interest in automated sample preparation. This study will evaluate an automated sample preparation technique of dissolved gas in water. The automation has been developed so as to create headspace in the sample vial while maintaining sample integrity and transferring the headspace to a GC-FID for analysis. |
| 11:15 am | Ron Snelling from PerkinElmer will present “Optimizing Productivity with Semi-Volatile EPA methods using Innovative Injection Technology and a New GC/MS.” This presentation demonstrates how enhancing GC/MS sensitivity can reduce laboratory costs by enabling the collection of smaller sample volumes and still be able to meet and/or exceed EPA criteria. A significantly smaller sample size is being used; therefore, less extraction solvent will be used and less storage space required. In most instances, the concentration step can be eliminated, providing additional cost savings for the laboratory. |
| 12:00 pm | Lunch |
| 1:00 pm | Ron Snelling from PerkinElmer will present Easy, quick, accurate …. Sample prep solutions for volatile and semi-volatile samples. This presentation will discuss easy and accurate preparation methods for both volatile and semi-volatile samples. The flexibility and cost saving methods extracting semi-volatile samples using SPE cartridges compared to liquid/liquid extraction, even for the nastiest of samples, will be discussed. In addition, easy sample preparation steps for many volatile applications using the technique of headspace. All these techniques maximize instrument uptime and laboratory throughput. |
| 1:45 pm | Aaren Alger, Chief of Quality Assurance & Lab Certification, PA DEP will give a progress report on happenings within the DEP and NELAC. |
Questions for Aaren Alger
Please enter questions for Aaren Alger. You do not need to attend the meeting to submit a question. Their answers will be presented at the meeting and reported in the next newsletter.
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