Speakers
Description
A new high-sensitivity water quality monitoring system has been developed and successfully operated for the Water Cherenkov Test Experiment (WCTE) at CERN. It uses a sub-nsec pulsed LED with wavelengths of 235nm to 500nm focused onto an 8.5m-long water column by a parabolic mirror. Stable remote operation within 1% is demonstrated while running through the sampled water. When the water is kept in the acrylic water column pipe, chemical leaching from the acrylic caused 20% per day of degradation in light transmission for the wavelengths below 300nm. This is consistent with 150 ppb per day of formaldehyde leaching from the acrylic pipe, and we would replace the pipe with a stainless steel pipe. We also develop a light scattering water monitor using the ring imaging Cherenkov counter technology, which will measure the forward diffraction angle to measure individual particle size. The Rayleigh scattering background will be overcome by linearly polarized light.
This water monitoring technology is a few orders of magnitude more sensitive than the commercially available water quality monitoring system, thanks to the long sampling length of the water and the precise photon counting technique that we use. The sensitivity reaches the drinking water limit of the cyanotoxin (Mixrocystine) due to the blue-green algae growing in the source water lake. organic mercury from the melting permafrost, and Selenium from the coal mine, for example. The scattering detector will be sensitive to the E.coli bacteria and microplastics in the water. An interdisciplinary research collaboration with the water engineers and the water treatment facility is being developed.
| Position | Research Scientist |
|---|---|
| Affiliation | TRIUMF |
| Country | Canada |