Coastal Water Quality Monitoring Network - Yantai-China

Yantai, China, is the pilot location for an innovative Coastal Water Quality monitoring network being jointly developed by Greenspan, Haicheng, the Chinese Academy of Science and the National Marine Agency.

Located on the Bohol Sea, the Yellow River basin is home to almost 350 million people. This large population, heavy industry and being one of the busiest seaports in the world all combine to potentially stress the natural environment.  Coupled with extensive mariculture and oil & gas reserves being explored in the sea, the potential for water quality problems are high.

Recognising the risks, proactive steps are being taken to monitor the water quality and detect any issues before the problems spread undetected.  Greenspan has delivered a water quality monitoring station that integrates a variety of water quality instruments into a real-time online system.

The station includes in-situ monitoring for:

Physical Parameters (YSI Sonde): 

• Temperature, Salinity, pH, Dissolved Oxygen, Turbidity

Nutrients (EnviroTech Instruments AutoLAB): 

• Nitrate, Ammonia, Phosphate using a wet chemistry analyser as Ion Selective Electrodes are ineffective in the marine environment

Biological Activity (YSI Sonde):

• Chlorophyll, Blue Green Algae

Pollutants (Turner Designs):

• Oil (Crude and Refined)

Traditionally, instruments performing these measurements require frequent maintenance, however the system uses an innovative multi-depth flow through sampling system that keeps the instruments protected on shore, dry in between measurements and in light proof chambers.  This solves the problems of bio-fouling, maintaining instruments without divers and obtaining measurements at multiple depths through the profile while minimizing hardware costs.  With the same instrument being used to measure water quality conditions at various depths, instrument variability has been eliminated, providing meaningful depth inter-comparison beyond the accuracy of most instruments.

Above: Crude oil reaction to rainfall event

In terms of the measurement system, the Campbell Scientific CR1000 provides all the measurement and control for full remote operation, including various modes such as:

• Low Temperature Shutdown.  The site can experience freezing conditions in the coastal waters so to protect the instruments the system is configured with a low temperature shutdown which stops water sampling, to be resumed only when the conditions warm up sufficiently

•  Manual mode.  All instruments can be run at higher sampling frequencies or in continuous recording to sample the water conditions during suspicious events
  
• Onboard instrument calibration.  The Nutrient analyser is equipped with reagents and standards for automatic calibration.  As both the instrument performance and the quality of the reagents/standards may change over time, automatic routines are used to run the standards through the system and use these to automatically correct the measured data for decay and drift.  The data logger is programmed with the routines for determining calibration coefficients for each parameter, in real time.

Above: Greenspan and Chinese Academy of Science staff checking the system performance

The CR1000 also manages the provision of data to various sources in real time – with a base station running Greenspan’s EnviroSCADA (with native Chinese support) and ENVAULT (www.envault.com.au) both receiving data in real time.  Aquatic Informatics Aquarius is also used to process the data for gaps, drift and other corrections before reporting to national agencies.

Above:Site inside hut with floating arm visible-Yantai Harbour

From the initial performance of the system, the benefits of the flow through system have been clearly demonstrated.  As shown by the photos below, there has been significant growth in the high nutrient and high light warmer waters near the surface, while the instrument inside the flow through system has no visible growth or degradation of the instrument condition.

Above: The intake arm with growth after 6 weeks

Above: The YSI before cleaning after the same period of time

The inter-comparison data between two nearby depths (in this case for blue green algae) also demonstrates the ability to detect small but discernible differences in the measurements beyond the accuracy of the instrument, even when the absolute value of the measurement is very small.


 For more information on the project, visit Greenspan’s Gallery & Videos at http://www.greenspan.com.au.

Environmental Management Increases Mining Profits

Conventional wisdom places environmental practices as an obstacle and burden to mining operations – an obstruction to the actual running of a business. Nothing could be further from the truth. For a savvy mining operator, an environmental management plan can be a highly useful tool for maximising profit margins, minimising potential liabilities, increasing efficiency and gaining positive publicity.

An Environmental Management System (EMS) in Australia means implementing an international standard of consistent improvement – namely, ISO 14001. A company which complies with ISO14001 in a given review period will be issued a certificate to that end and will enjoy greater relations with other ISO14001 compliant companies. Having a compliant EMS also serves as significant protection from legal issues, often preventing costly and image-damaging litigation.

ISO 14001 is not designed to dictate to Managers how to run their companies; it is a tool for improving efficiency of business systems and environmental performance. Having an EMS can be a competitive advantage in the tender process, leading to increased tender success and increased business success. Having a certified EMS is a requirement to entering some Japanese or EU markets.

Environmental risk categorisation and rating is a part of a successful EMS, improving your organisation’s ability to manage and mitigate risk associated with the environmental effects of mining operations and their after-effects. Recycling waste and reusing energy is also a key part of an EMS, allowing organisations to reduce operating costs, increasing profit margins. For example, following the Queensland floods earlier this year, water produced as a result of coal seam gas extraction was allowed to be used for removal of mud and debris from flood-affected buildings given that the water quality passed suitable criteria. This produced goodwill and positive publicity for the participating companies, possibly increasing public support for further mine development.

The essence of the ISO14001 standard is that it is a positive feedback loop – to maintain their certificate, a company must improve its environmental management measurably every year. One method of doing this is to introduce automated data logging of important environmental variables, such as the salinity of runoff, or the suspended solids in tailings dams. Automatically logged data can be used to construct much more detailed models than manually collected data, as it can be collected more frequently with ease. Another advantage is that automated collection allows real-time monitoring of on-site conditions, without waiting weeks for lab analysis of samples.

Campbell Scientific Australia is based in Townsville, Queensland and has been a leader in water quality measurement for 18 years, with hundreds of sites across Australia boasting Campbell sensors and data loggers. The company offers automated, on-site logging of water quality data including turbidity, suspended solids concentrations, water temperature, water depth, electrical conductivity, salinity, pH, oxygen reduction potential and dissolved oxygen.

Dissolved solids concentrations are especially important for water quality in an EMS, as standards are set for the suitable use for water in tailings dams etc and often have a maximum allowable suspended solids specification for a given application. For example, the flood water cleanup mentioned earlier allowed CSG water which met criteria of pH, suspended solids and electrical conductivity (often used as a measure of salinity) to be used for that purpose. Different requirements must be met to allow waste water to be used for dust suppression or for revegetation. Campbell Scientific Australia can provide real time monitoring of these criteria, allowing business decisions to be made quickly with instant and historical data available easily. A simple system for a small tailings dam might cost approximately $25000, a negligible cost compared to the overall cost of running a mine.

Real time data logging of water quality is a vital component of an EMS for mining companies and Campbell Scientific Australia’s Application Engineers have the expertise and flexibility to make the integration and support of on-site sensors a successful and profitable project.

A Comparison of Campbell Scientific's Top Selling Data Loggers

This video serves as an introduction to our new generation of dataloggers; it describes the number and types of channels which are available for measurement, which communication protocols are supported and relative strengths of each type of data logger. For those who have not dealt with Campbell Scientific data loggers before, this video will give a good idea of what is available and which model might be most appropriate for your application.