Monitoring water quality in wastewater collection systems is challenging. The distributed network and poor access requires any deployed sensor to have a very low maintenance requirement.
Traditional real-time water quality sensors require regular cleaning and calibration that limits their effectiveness in these environments.
Current manual monitoring cost per site = $100,000 / annum
The key question our team and Western Environmental asked was - Could a bio-electrode sensor provide an in-situ reading directly from the collection system to estimate wastewater organic concentrations with minimal maintenance?
Some of the key results from the deployment:
- Sensor Inspection / Cleaning = Once every 6 months.
- Clear trending and correlation to traditional light-based COD measurement.
- Additional statistical analysis demonstrating weekly trending and patterns.
- $90,000 savings over conventional monitoring solution