Torkelson Geochemistry, Inc. Information

Torkelson Geochemistry, Inc. (TGI) specializes in providing laboratory and consulting services in the areas of hydrocarbon fingerprinting and physical properties of liquid petroleum products. TGI takes pride in providing high quality data and consultation in a timely fashion. TGI has been in business since 1995 and provides these services to several major companies and many environmental service companies, law firms and consultants. Hydrocarbon fingerprinting or hydrocarbon characterization is used in assessment, remediation and/or litigation related to petroleum contaminated sites. Hydrocarbon fingerprinting provides information as to the type, degree of weathering, age, and possible source of spilled petroleum. The data used comes from high resolution capillary gas chromatography analysis, a technique not available at most environmental laboratories. High quality data combined with the expertise to interpret the results provides the client with useable information to better evaluate petroleum contaminated sites. Determining the density, viscosity, surface tension, and interfacial tension of a liquid petroleum provides the basic data for modeling the recovery of petroleum spills. Environmental scientists have been working on better methods for estimating the volume and recoverability of free phase petroleum products in soil. These calculations require accurate interfacial and surface tensions between petroleum products, water, and air. It has been found that the interfacial and surface tension values for petroleum products recovered from soil are significantly different from literature values for the same petroleum product fresh from the dispenser. The calculated volumes are sensitive to these values and are significantly less than those obtained by "approximate" methods. TGI helped develop the use of the statistical technique "correlation coefficients" to evaluate the results of hydrocarbon fingerprint (gas chromatography) data. The method objectively compares and contrasts the analytical results of two or ...