The Science of Reliability: Inside EOSi’s Lab-Driven MicroC® Performance
Setting the Benchmark for MicroC® Quality Assurance
Indispensable to manufacturing operations, EOSi’s team of laboratory technicians perform chemical testing, quality control inspections, and quality assurance certifications to ensure wastewater-treatment customers that MicroC® products meet strict manufacturing specifications, deliver consistent chemical oxygen demand (COD) values, and suffer no product degradation during long-term storage.
MicroC products undergo stringent and comprehensive QA/QC testing by EOSi’s twenty in-house labs that include rigorous pre-qualification of suppliers and strict control of raw materials prior to manufacturing. Products are analyzed for specifications conformance prior to release for customer shipment, ensuring they are precisely formulated, free of contaminants, and delivering consistent and superior quality.
Over a typical 12-month period, EOSi’s QA/QC lab specialists analyze more than 600 raw material samples from more than 20 suppliers and 650 finished product samples from EOSi’s 20 North American manufacturing facilities. EOSi’s comprehensive QA/QC laboratory analysis capabilities include:
• NUR (nitrate utilization rate)
• PUR (phosphorus uptake rate)
• Respirometry
• Microscopy
• Near-infrared spectroscopy
• Wet chemistry analysis (NH3, NO3, NO2, TN, TP, PO4-P, alkalinity DO)
• Gas chromatography-flame ionization detection (GC/FID) for alcohols and volatile fatty acid (VFA) quantification
Finished MicroC products are documented with official lab-prepared certificates of analysis (COA), an industry-standard formal document detailing conclusive laboratory testing results signed by the authorized lab conducting the analyses, with finished product samples retained for at least six months for verification and comparison.
The EOSi Advantage: Evolving for Excellence
Continuous improvements to EOSi’s labs located at each manufacturing facility include technology advancements and equipment upgrades enhancing testing accuracy and process efficiency. EOSi’s labs use gas chromatography (GC) and flame ionization detection (FID) technology for analyzing alcohols, esters, and ketones. Used in analytical chemistry for separating and analyzing compounds that can be vaporized without decomposition, GC typically requires using tanks of helium, a “zero-air” gas that is a finite resource in danger of planetary depletion.
EOSi’s lab converted their GC/FID equipment to run instead on hydrogen gas they now produce themselves in the lab, eliminating helium usage and its high cost, lowering the lab’s carbon footprint, and creating a safer environment by eliminating the safety hazard of onsite pressurized tanks. Specialized high-purity water generation equipment now converts municipally sourced water into high-purity deionized (DI) water used with the new hydrogen generator to create hydrogen gas, boosting sustainability and enhancing the testing accuracy.
The labs also use near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy using handheld analyzers for quality control and monitoring chemical parameters of samples, especially useful for “wet-chem” testing and real-time analysis at field locations. Handheld NIRs deployed remotely from EOSi’s lab locations across the United States enable access to accurate real-time data that accelerates product decisions and streamlines manufacturing processes.
Resilience Through Diversification
Upgrading lab equipment across all EOSi labs enables resource duplication as critical backup to eliminate operational downtime resulting from equipment failure, and enabling access to additional on-demand lab resources when needed for processing large batches of chemical samples more quickly. The lab upgrades also deliver a vital measure of systems redundancy: multiple components or processes that can perform the same functions, yet operate independently and adaptively — resource duplication as “backup,” but also resilience through diversification.
Skill diversification and team cross-training is also part of EOSi’s continuous improvement cycle. Lab specialists with exclusive expertise train other team members so mission-critical operations don’t unexpectedly halt when staffers with vital skills become ill or absent. Cross-training can also reveal hidden or undiscovered process improvements and manufacturing efficiencies that result in direct benefits to EOSi customers.
Continuous improvement of EOSi’s lab testing capabilities and multilayer quality control from procured raw materials through finished product ensures MicroC customers receive products certified to meet or exceed stringent standards and expectations. The gatekeepers and guarantors of MicroC product quality, EOSi’s lab team are the customer’s advocate for helping them cope with ever-changing plant processes and permit requirements to achieve and maintain regulatory compliance for biological nutrient removal.