What will 2013 bring?

January 7, 2013

You’re reading this – you survived!  What I mean to say is you’ve got through Christmas, New Year and the end of the world and can now look forward to 2013 – and all that it holds for busy researchers involved in environmental, agronomy, mineral exploration, groundwater, water quality and water level monitoring.  So in our field what can we expect in the year ahead?

A focus on the bottom-line

It sort of goes without saying that in a flat economy you, your customers and your suppliers need to focus on the bottom-line but you will still need equipment, often one-off items like a specialist sediment sampler or a means of accurately measuring soil moisture content , in order to secure work.  These items can be expensive and you never know how often you might use them to cover the cost of your investment – so why not rent?

Van Walt offers one of the largest selections of environmental monitoring and sampling equipment to rent in the UK; from pumps to samplers, water quality meters to full blown telemetry systems. Available for 2 day express rental periods to ‘however long you need it’ at prices that haven’t risen in the last three years. Call us on 01428 661660 for more information or visit http://www.rentenvironmentalequipment.co.uk/ .

Back to basics

What piece of equipment should every environmental researcher have in the back of their van – an auger! It’s easy to ignore the usefulness of these simple and efficient hand tools but with the right hand auger a sample can be retrieved quickly and with minimum effort.  If you remember the important principles: sample per layer, never mix soil horizons and avoid contamination of deeper layers an auger is easy to use, surprisingly effective, quick, light and excellent value – all our hand augers come with a 12 month guarantee.

Time is money

Time on site retrieving data is time not spent in the office analysing the results, liaising with the customer and putting forward recommendations for future activity.  Increasingly we find our customers want accurate data delivered directly to their desktop and are looking to install telemetry systems to manage groundwater monitoring networks, water quality systems and soil moisture activity on sites as diverse as wetlands, wind farms and archaeological digs. From off-the-shelf solutions to completely bespoke systems, when it comes to accuracy and efficiency, we can supply telemetry systems to suit any environmental monitoring project.

Respect for the environment

We work in the environmental sector so we’re constantly looking at more ecologically friendly ways to do things like deploying re-usable Stainless Steel Bailers or Foot Valves. One of the pieces of equipment we are particularly proud of is our solar powered AC Sipper.  A flexible remediation system which can be configured for product recovery applications in single or multi-wells.  Compact and easy to install the Sipper uses a unique down-well pump to recover hydrocarbons through a floating oleophilic/hydrophobic intake filter. Once full, the pump reverses, pressurises the system and pumps the recovered fluid to the surface and into a storage vessel. It can extract fluids from depths to 55 metres below ground and recover viscous hydrocarbons such as oil – all powered by a standard solar panel. For more information visit: https://www.vanwalt.com/product-recovery.htm .

Moving from high flow -> low flow -> no purge sampling

This is one of the biggest changes you can make which will impact on the bottom-line, time is money and respecting the environment! No purge sampling saves time and money, the logistics are simple, data quality is improved and it’s ‘green technology’ but, a word of caution – there is no one size fits all solution as some techniques are good for sampling VOCs and others for inorganics. At Van Walt we are proud to sell the Snap Sampler, used extensively by companies like Shell, DuPont and Chevron. It works on the principle of taking a ‘snap’ sample at a point in time making it excellent for repeating a sampling programme to track changes. To see how it works view our video or to assess which no purge sampling technique would be best for a particular project, download our Information Sheet: Not all Passive Samplers are equal.