Less than two weeks after he purchased his first Electric Actuator, Tom Megna with Environmental Quality Laboratories bought a second one. “We love them!” Tom told us. “There’s no way we could do the same work with manual equipment.” Tom’s group uses the Electric Actuator to collect groundwater samples from monitoring wells; high-quality samples, that is.

The new Electric Actuator’s claim-to-fame is that its variable speed allows flow rates to be easily and repeatedly (or consistently) set. “This makes collecting high-quality groundwater samples under a variety of conditions a reality,” explained David Cooper, Project Engineer. The actuator operates at 40 to 120 cycles per minute.

“We used to use peristaltic pumps,” Tom explained, “but the samples were so cloudy I had to run a mass spec on the mass spec to get what I needed. Then the detection limits weren’t what I promised and everybody was upset.” So not only is it much easier to use than other pumping systems, “this tool will save me thousands of dollars in laboratory tests, not to mention labor costs,” Tom explained.

The MB6120 Electric Actuator also minimizes field effort. “The actuator frees the operator from the sampling process and allows them to focus on the requirements of the test,” David added. Since it can be powered by a car or motorcycle battery, the actuator can be easily carried to remote test sites. It eliminates the need to transport an air compressor and a large electric generator that might be required if using a pneumatic pumping system.

Customers can expect great results when the actuator is used with the Geoprobe® MB470 Mechanical Bladder Pump. As the crank-arm in the actuator cycles it raises and lowers the inner tubing which is connected to the bladder inside the Mechanical Bladder Pump. Movement of the tubing up and down expands and compresses the bladder. During this expansion/compression process, the groundwater flows into the bladder from the formation and is pumped up the inner tubing and out for sampling. Water quality parameters, such as pH, dissolved oxygen, oxidation/reduction potential, specific conductance and turbidity may be monitored to meet low-flow sampling requirements. Both monitoring wells and direct push groundwater samplers may be sampled with the new MB6120 actuator and the MB470 pump.