The Townsville Water Laboratory is an advanced analytical laboratory offering a range of services which are available to the general community. It currently services other shires and councils, hospitals, university and schools and other institutions in the North Queensland area. It is open to the public for a varied suite of soil and water testing.
The laboratory is composed of a chemical laboratory and a microbiological laboratory and is able to provide analysis of open waters, treated drinking water samples, trade waste, sewage and other environmental samples.
Quality Assurance
The laboratory has been NATA accredited for chemical testing since 2002 and biological testing since 2005.
Quality system certification to ISO 9001 was obtained in 2003.
Services
The Townsville Water Laboratory is able to analyse the following common types of samples:
- Boilers
- Bore water
- Cooling towers
- Drinking water
- Dust and dust fallouts
- Effluents
- Ground waters
- Impingers
- Irrigation water
- Marine waters
- Raw sewage
- Recreational waters
- Rivers, lakes, stream waters, dams
- Sediments
- Sewage digester gas
- Sludges
- Soils and acid sulphate soils
- Swimming pools
- Tip leachates
- Trade wastes
- Other special samples
top 
Analytical Capabilities
Townsville Water Laboratory also offers comprehensive sampling, testing and consulting services, including:
- Water supply analysis, including:
- physico-chemical parameters
- metals
- disinfection by-products
- water microbiology
- Wastewater analysis, including:
- biological oxygen demand
- chemical oxygen demand
- total organic carbon
- suspended solids
- oil and grease and/or total petroleum hydrocarbons
- volatile suspended solids
- free and total nutrients.
- Environmental analysis, including:
- free nutrients (ammonia, nitrates and phosphates)
- total nitrogen and phosphorus
- algae identification
- counting and microphotography
- heavy and major metals
- acid sulphate soils
- cation exchange capacity
- field analysis for:
- pH
- conductivity
- dissolved oxygen
- chlorophyll
- temperature
- Biological analysis, including:
- Coliforms (including E.coli) and Faecal Coliforms/Thermotolerant Coliforms
- Pseudomonas aeruginosa
- Faecal Streptococcus
- Heterotrophic Plate Count
- Natural and Digester gas analysis for:
- Hydrogen Sulphide
- Carbon Dioxide
- Methane
- Carbon Monoxide
- Nitrogen.
Instrumentation
The facility boasts of state of the art instrumentation including, but not limited to:
- UV-VIS Spectrophotometer
- Inorganic, Total Organic Carbon and Total Carbon Analyser
- Inductively Coupled Plasma – Mass Spectrometer
- High performance liquid chromatograph
- Flow Injection Analyser
- Discrete Analyser for low level nutrients testing
- Portable pH, conductivity and dissolved oxygen meters
- GC-MS and GC-ECD
- High resolution microscope with digital image capture system
- Fourier Transform Infra-red Spectrometer
top
Experience
The laboratory is staffed by a team of highly skilled and experienced chemists and microbiologists who have extensive experience in the water and wastewater industry. They are dedicated to providing high quality work and are able to offer competent advice, efficient processing of samples and interpretation of results to clients.
The staff have tertiary qualifications and expertise in chemistry, microbiology and molecular genetics, organic chemistry, the analysis of food, water, wastewater, environmental and refinery samples for chemical, biological and microbiological constituents, food production/safety, HACCP, algal identification and bacterial pathogens.
Request an Analysis
The Townsville Water Laboratory can provide advice relating to your analytical needs or test results. Information or advice required beyond this scope will be charged at professional rates. The scientists and technicians are happy to discuss your requirements to suit your analytical needs.
Please contact the Customer Service Centre or send an email to the Townsville Water Laboratory for more information.
Please note we are located in Townsville, North Queensland and any samples will need to arrive and be processed by our laboratories within 24 hours to maintain analytical credibility.
Address
The facility is located at:
Douglas Water Treatment Plant, Angus Smith Drive, Douglas, Queensland, Australia, 4814
For more information, please phone the Customer Service Centre or send an email to Townsville Water.
top