Objective
Objectives and content:
Industrial companies producing wastewater are under increasing pressure to reduce the polluting load of their waste and to monitor the wastewater they discharge to sewer or direct to the environment. This activity is predominantly carried out using sampling and laboratory analysis, which is labour intensive, may miss damaging peak loads and is too slow to allow any preventive action to be taken.
The industrial objective of the LOADMON project is, on exploitation, to provide pollution load monitoring equipment, which is economical and reliable to meet this industrial need and reduce operating costs. The equipment will also assist wastewater treatment plant operators, by providing reliable affordable equipment to monitor and control the process, particularly the treatment load within the upstream wastewater networks. Another objective is to provide reliable equipment for environmental monitoring, especially for intermittent and variable discharges, which are presently poorly served. LOADMON will also support the move towards pollution control over large regions, where obtaining good quality data is currently very expensive. The wastewater measurement environment is very hostile for instrumentation, and the concentration of pollutants at present can only be monitored continuously by using expensive sample preparation and automatic chemical analysis equipment, which both require frequent maintenance.
The LOADMON project will develop equipment using non-contact techniques to measure suspended solids, organic load as Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) and Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), nitrate, phosphate, ammonia and flow. The final hardware deliverable will be an optical prototype system with sophisticated data processing, capable of safe use in a hazardous atmosphere. The total avoidance of direct contact will result in: much better reliability than current technologies; operating costs down by an estimated factor of 5; no sample preparation equipment hence useful power savings. Due to this major advance, LOADMON technology will enable a number of new pollution monitoring applications both in industrial and municipal wastewater processing, for example the real time control of the input load to treatment plants using monitors and flow control within the wastewater network. It is also expected that LOADMON technology will have applications in other industries where turbid liquids are processed, such as brewing, bio gas plants, paper-making and food processing. The consortium consists of an instrument manufacturer, a university, a research company, an optical engineering company, a hazardous area equipment specialist and four end users to provide a range of situations and sample types. BRITE-EURAM areas covered are 1.2.1.M 1.2.3.M 1.2.2.S 1.4.4.M.
Fields of science
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringwater treatment processeswastewater treatment processes
- natural sciencesphysical sciencesclassical mechanicsfluid mechanicsfluid dynamics
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesenvironmental sciencespollution
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesdata sciencedata processing
Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CSC - Cost-sharing contractsCoordinator
SN5 8YF Swindon
United Kingdom