On-line robotic systems for continuous monitoring of toxicity and chemical parameters in irrigation water
Author(s)
Tortelli, Annalisa
Date Issued
June 29, 2016
Type
Doctoral Thesis
Abstract
Global water scarcity caused an increased use of wastewater effluents as unconventional water sources for agriculture products. Since more than 10% of the world population consumes food produced by irrigation with wastewater, the integration of chemical and biological monitoring in wastewater effluents has now become a key issue for safeguarding the environmental quality and hygiene of water bodies.
The opportunity of rapidly achieving consistent results, in conjunction with improved analytical throughput, represents a remarkable technological breakthrough in this field. Being conventional methods expensive, time consuming and based on laborious procedures, they result ineffective to quickly monitor changes in the quality of water and wastewater samples. Technological developments in on-line, real time and early warning systems have facilitated the continuous audit of water for protecting environmental biota and human health.
A new line of discrete analysers, performing both biological and chemical continuous measurements in water samples, has been developed. Specifically, two original models of on-line analysers, respectively Easy Coli for continuously measuring Escherichia coli concentration in irrigation water and Easychem Tox On-line for performing chemical analysis along with toxicity tests, have been constructed and tested.
Easy Coli is an on-line automatic device for the analysis of E. coli in effluent wastewater equipped with autosampler, filtration unit, and detection apparatus. After the improvement of the automatic analytical cycle, a field campaign has been achieved for quantifying the bacteria load in samples coming from wastewater effluents. Easychem Tox On-line is a random-access platform, which comprises: a refrigerated plate for storing bacteria; an illuminated compartment for microalgae; a plate for containing reagents, calibrants and controls; a mechanical arm for aspiration, transferring and dispensing operations; a thermostated reaction plate holding 80 positions, incorporated with a fluorimeter, a colorimeter, a luminometer and an automated cuvette washing station. Within Easychem Tox On-line, both luminescent bacteria and fluorescent algae have been selected as biomonitors for rapidly measuring acute toxicity in water samples. In parallel, the determination of some common chemical parameters allowed to perform an integrated chemical and biological control of water and wastewater, thus giving information about causes and effects of contamination within the same instrument.
Additional information
Dottorato di ricerca in Biotecnologie vegetali
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