Name:

Contact details

Qualifications

Ph. D, 'Combined time and frequency domain approaches to the operational identification of vehicle suspension systems', Dublin City University, 2011.

B.Eng, Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Dublin City University, 2005.

Project Summary

Autonomous monitoring of nutrient levels in natural waters

Background

Environmental legislation such as the European Union Water Framework Directive[1] establishes a legal framework to protect and restore clean water across Europe. The legislation calls for continuous monitoring to provide a broad understanding of the health of water bodies by 2015. Low cost, widely distributed, autonomous sensors are required as manual sample collection and analysis techniques cannot provide the spatial and temporal resolution[2] to effectively monitor water resources.

An autonomous wet chemistry analyser have been developed by the Adaptive sensors group to monitor phosphate levels in natural waters and at waste water treatment plants. The phosphate analyzer incorporates fluid handling, microfluidic technology, colorimetric chemical detection, and real time wireless communications in a compact and rugged portable device.

Results 

The phosphate analyser was deployed for 3 days in an estuarine environment taking half hourly measurements. Daily validation samples were taken and analyzed in the laboratory. The results of the field trial are shown below. The analyser data correlates well with that of the validation samples. The advantage of this real time system can be seen from the events which can be detected through continuous monitoring. The peaks and troughs in the analyzer data are attributed to the tidal nature of the estuary. The analyser detects these tidal events which are not captured using manual sampling. This ability to detect events coupled with real time communication provides a powerful environmental monitoring tool.

Partners

EpiSensor Ltd, Limerick, Ireland

http://www.episensor.com/

Funding

Enterprise Ireland, Innovation partnership, Grant code IP/2008/0544

Enterprise Ireland, Technology development, Grant code TD/2008/111

Outcomes and future work

Future work will focus on long term field deployments of the second generation system.  Field trials are currently underway at a waste water treatment plan.

References

[1] ‘Directive 200/60/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 October 2000 establishing a framework for Community action in the field of water policy’, Official Journal L 327/1, Dec. 2000.

[2] Jordan P., Arnscheidt A., McGrogan H., McCormick S., 'Characterising phosphorus transfers in rural catchments using a continuous bank-side analyser', Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 372-381, 2007.

Publications

D. Maher, J. Healy, J. Cleary, G. Carroll, D. Diamond, 'Microfluidic chip development for an autonomous field deployable water quality analyser', 21st Micro mechanics and micro systems Europe workshop, Enschede, Netherlands, 26--29 September, 2010.

J. Cleary, D. Maher, J. Healy, C. Slater, G. Carroll, D. Diamond, 'A microfluidic sensor for monitoring of nutrients in natural waters', EUROPTRODE X--10th European Conference on Optical Chemical Sensors and Biosensors, Prague, Czech Republic, 28--31 March, 2010.

J. Cleary, D. Maher, C. Slater, D. Diamond, 'In situ monitoring of environmental water quality using an autonomous microfluidic sensor', IEEE Sensors Applications Symposium, pp 36--40, Limerick, Ireland, 23--25 February, 2010.

Further Information