UV Water Analysis System
In most places water filtration is common and not given much thought, but in some places clean water is hard to come by. In these places, it’s expensive and difficult to install the water filtration systems commonly used. There are portable filters that can be used in these areas, but they often don’t filter out everything harmful and don’t combine filters and ultraviolet light (UV) treatment. UV water treatment can sometimes be more effective on certain bacteria that grows in water, than other water cleaning techniques. UV cleaning can also be inexpensive. When UV cleaning is combined with water filtering, such as sediment filters and carbon filters, the likelihood of consuming contaminant water is extremely low.
In addition to the UV treatment and filtering, no current transportable system contains in-line water quality monitoring. If the quality of the water being monitored, there is no way to tell if the system is working properly and the water is safe to consume. Spectroscopy is a common technique used to identify chemical compounds, and can be used to monitor contaminants in water. Raman spectroscopy is the best technique for monitoring because water is a weak Raman scatterer. Another method for monitoring water is by temperature, certain temperatures can allow bacteria to grow quickly and thrive, which would make the water harder to clean. By monitoring the temperature of the water using infrared light, we can get a fast easy reading with no contact.
In order to further optimize this system and make it ideal for places with minimal access to resources, the best option for powering the system is solar power. In order to show the results of the monitoring a user interface is required. This can be accomplished using a microcomputer and touch screen display. The display will not only show the water quality monitoring but also show data of the solar power, time water if filtered, and battery percentage. This prototype was sponsored by Ocean Insights, who provided the spectrometer and laser module, BCI technologies, who promn nhvided the battery and funded for this project, and MKS Newport, who provided optical components for the spectroscopy system.
Sponsors
Ocean Insights