Needville, TX
(281) 750-1881

Before you call

The questions machine shops actually ask us.

Most of what a maintenance supervisor wants to know before picking up the phone comes down to two comparisons: how fast a reading arrives, and what a stabilizer does that a biocide does not.

15 min24 to 72 hours

An HMB activity reading against a traditional growth or plate count.

The other comparison is chemistry: a stabilizer that suppresses reproduction instead of a biocide that kills and gets consumed doing it. Every question below is really one of those two ideas applied to a specific worry, so once the pattern clicks the rest of the list reads fast.

These are the same seven questions BioTech fields on the phone, in the same order, with nothing softened and nothing invented. If your question is not here, the fastest path is still the phone: a human answers it, at BioTech, every time.

It works with virtually any coolant in use today. BioTech does not sell coolant, which is the point: there is nothing to steer you toward. The company keeps a database of what is on the market and will tell you plainly which fluids are better than others when you ask, then works the program around whatever is already in your sumps.

Not entirely, and it is worth being straight about why. Skimming tramp oil needs access to the top of the sump, and a great many freestanding machines and self-contained reservoirs simply do not offer it. BioTech does not make skimmers. The filters are built to pull out solid particles, the dirt and fine metal that kill coolant performance and give microbes somewhere to live. If you need a skimmer, BioTech will look at your setup and point you at someone else's equipment that fits it.

Less than you are spending now, even if you believe you are currently doing nothing. The full claim is deliberately specific: never have rancid coolant, save on labor, extend tool life significantly, eliminate disposal of liquid derived from coolant, mitigate coolant associated health problems, and reduce chemical purchases.

A biocide kills, and is consumed doing it. When the concentration falls below the effective level you get a bloom, a burst of fast growth, and your window to redose is measured in hours. A stabilizer does not kill anything. The organisms simply will not grow in its presence, so the population falls away slowly by attrition over days, and recovers just as slowly. That gives you a redose window measured in days instead of hours.

It is not the same measurement, and that matters more than the speed. A plate count estimates how many organisms are present, to a published precision of about thirty percent. The HMB test measures how much biological activity is happening right now, by reading the peroxidase enzymes aerobic organisms produce while metabolizing, to a precision of about three percent. Both are useful and they are often complementary, but only one of them tells you something before the shift ends.

No. The HMB X is built to be used by people with little or no laboratory experience. You take the sample, add the reagent, and read the biomass range off the display fifteen minutes later.

No. The same instrument is used on cooling tower water, where biofilm is the principal facilitator of Legionella growth, on activated sludge in industrial waste treatment, on aluminum can plant coolants, in soil bioremediation, and by first responders testing powders of unknown origin on site.

Go deeper

An FAQ answer is a paragraph. Some of this is worth a page.

Each product has its own detail page for the reader who wants the full mechanism, not just the short version.

HMB X rapid bacterial testing

What the peroxidase reaction is actually measuring, and why activity and colony counts are not the same number.

Mark II Stabilizer

The sawtooth against the sine wave, and why a redose window measured in days beats one measured in hours.

Zero Waste program

Test, filter, remove tramp oil, stabilize, in that order, and the honest limit on what the filters alone can do.

Testing beyond metalworking

Cooling towers, activated sludge, bioremediation, and on-site screening for first responders.

Still easier to just ask. Send BioTech the details or call directly.