Position
Lab technician
Date
September 2011 – September 2012
Description of role
I worked in the laboratory and was part of the team responsible for the quality control of various facets of the refinery as well as helping with development projects and improvement of SOPs.
The quality control covered fuel sales, intermediate product streams and the wastewater pumped back into the estuary. In brief, I was trained up to use compressed gases, concentrated HF acid and to conduct my tests to ISO 9001 and ISO 17025 standards, with emissions tests being held to MCERTS from the environmental agency. Some of the equipment and techniques used were: titrations (manual and auto), UV-Vis, XAS, ICP, ashing, turbidity meters, viscometers, densometers and flash point testers.
Development projects included testing the settling rates of impurities and applicability for scale up construction on site. This was to increase the quality of fuel oil created and so increased revenues in sales. Testing of diesel additives with the aim of reducing costs on site. Bringing the ICP instrument back online in my spare time. This sped up the testing speeds for low concentration impurities in gas streams/products and so greatly reduced the number of man-hours required and allowed for greater rates and widths of sampling on site than was previously possible.