After many years of waiting, Method 1664A for oil and grease testing is now official; Freon can no longer be used. Due to the performance-based requirements of Method 1664A, many facilities will encounter issues when trying to implement this procedure to become compliant. One of the issues is associated with the conventional LLE procedure. In comparison, SPE eliminates several of these issues, but not all. The biggest issue is that because it is performance based, the method places the burden directly on each facility conducting oil and grease testing to routinely achieve the method recovery requirements to maintain compliance. A simple way to accomplish this is by using automated SPE extractors that are programmed and certified, SPE disks that are certified for automation, and an evaporator that is designed for U.S. EPA Method 1664A to reliably and reproducibly achieve the results that are needed to meet compliance requirements.
