A new perspective for real time and in-situ water quality monitoring

Hydreka, have built on their expertise of online and connected metrology in the water sector by creating the NODE range of microbial biosensors. This system is connected to a self-powered PLC to monitor and analyse natural, urban or industrial aquatic environments in real time. Hydreka worked alongside Enoveo, a company borne out of a combination of scientists from the University of Lyon and contaminated site professionals, who specialise in environmental microbiology, chemistry and biotechnology.

This innovative approach opens up a whole new method of monitoring and protection of water resources (groundwater, surface water, marine environment...) and wastewater management (industrial and urban effluents, sewage networks, WWTP bioprocesses...).

NODE’s technology enables BOD5 (Biochemical Oxygen Demand) analysis in real-time and has recently achieved Environmental Technology Verification (ETV), awarded by the French National Laboratory of Metrology and Testing. 

NODE offers real time information, decision making and support for process control operators. As a central element in NODE Solutions and Services, NODE microbial biosensors can be used to evaluate the organic load or to detect the presence of pollutants or toxic compounds in water.  This integrated, energetically autonomous approach adapts to all types of measurement points in urban or industrial environments (eg, industrial discharges, sewage networks, the different stages of wastewater treatment processes…), or in natural environments (eg, storm water overflows, surface water, groundwater, water catchment areas…).

Thanks to NODE Solutions and Services, Hydreka now provides a complete diagnostic and anticipation tool to act in a very short time on process malfunctions or to manage accidental pollution. This system pushes process control towards its optimisation of efficiency and lowers the cost of water processes. NODE Solutions and Services facilitates the management of crisis situations and prevents and controls possible non-regulatory compliance.

Based on a modular design, NODE Solutions and Services is adapted for conventional and advanced diagnosis (eg, sectorisation, pollution research, compliance of regulatory discharges, monitoring of catchment fields). In addition, embedded intelligence and the development of custom algorithms enable a service directly oriented to the individual needs of Hydreka’s customers (real time decision and assistance with process control).

NODE Solutions and Services integrates a self-powered PLC (DTU2) which ensures complete data management (recording, transmission, processing), sending alarms in the event of detected anomalies or triggering dedicated actions (sampling by automatic samplers, stopping or starting a process etc).

The self-powered PLC is also designed to integrate additional sensors (pH, ORP, dissolved O2, conductivity, temperature, flow ...) for a multi-parametric approach. Sending of alarms and triggering actions can be set up based on the signal of the biosensor alone or from the integration of several signals provided by the different probes connected.

NODE biosensors convert the activity of microorganisms, naturally present in the environment that the user wants to monitor, into a directly exploitable electrical signal. Since micro-organisms are very sensitive to environmental changes, the measurement of their activity is an immediate indicator of the water quality or the performance of a process (eg, increase or decrease in organic load, presence of toxic compounds...).

The versatile and autonomous, NODE Solutions and Services is adapted to all site configurations (sewage networks, treatment ponds, piezometers, rivers...). Compared to most measurement probes, NODE biosensors benefit from minimal maintenance since they exploit microbial growth that often causes dysfunction in most other online metrology systems (ie, biofouling).

Hydreka’s consulting service can also provide complementary custom made solutions and services in order to best meet its client needs.