Monitoring the water environment with solar technology
The Da Nang Center of Integrated Circuit (CENTIC) has invented a water environment monitoring station run with solar energy, the first hi-tech system of this kind designed and manufactured by Vietnamese engineers.
The water environment monitoring equipment
The station has the shape of a float which can easily move to many different positions when necessary to serve monitoring. It can measure many different parameters: dissolved oxygen, pH, ORP, electricity conductivity, turbidity, chlorine, temperature and suspended solids content.
As the station is anchored and floats on the water’s surface, it is designed in a way to withstand severe weather conditions (sun, rain and strong wind). It is corrosion resistant, durable, and can provide energy for its operation.
Solar panels are attached on the top of buoy which provide energy to electronic devices. Below the buoy are attached sensors. Inside the float, electronic circuits are placed to process signals transmitted from the sensor. They transmit processed data to the control center via SMS or GPRS/3G data transmission line.
By analyzing the indexes from the monitoring station, environment management agencies are informed about unusual changes of water quality so as to make reasonable decisions to protect the water environment and prevent accidents.
The monitoring equipment created by CENTIC was put into trial use at Thac Gian Lake in Thanh Khe district in Da Nang City in December 2016.
With the equipment, people and management agencies can monitor the water quality by accessing http://quantrac.centic.vn/. In case of emergency, the system will send SMS to the mobile phones of agencies’ leaders and management officers.
“The sensing system and the software to manage and update figures of the monitoring system are operated in the internet environment, ready to provide functions to serve monitoring, coming in line with Da Nang’s goal of developing a smart environmental management system,” said deputy of CENTIC Nguyen Hoai Duc.
According to Duc, other localities in Vietnam have to import expensive environment monitoring solutions. The solutions are developed and packaged by foreign engineers, and, in many cases, they don’t fit Vietnamese circumstances. CENTIC’s engineers decided they needed to invent a hi-tech localized product.
The monitoring station is designed and manufactured by CENTIC’s embedded system engineers and most of the components are made by CENTIC. Only the sensor unit attached to the buoy is imported as Vietnam still cannot manufacture it.
It is estimated that such a station costs VND1.5 billion, or half of the amount of money for foreign-made technology.
After the successful trial use at Thac Gian, CENTIC will install eight more stations at other locations in the city./.
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