Multisensor Portable Meter for Environmental Applications

In recent years, the development of information and communication technologies has notably improved the water management processes, but the technologies for water quality control still leave much scope for improvement. Specially, in situ and inline water monitoring has an increasing interest in order to take decisions at real time. The main drawbacks of the current portable meters are their high cost and their high power consumption. In this paper, it is proposed a portable compact meter for measuring simultaneously oxidation-reduction potential, conductivity, temperature, and amperometric parameters like chlorine. This system includes microsensors fabricated with microelectronic technologies, and a commercial temperature sensor, all them allowing a very low power consumption. Validation of the system has been carried out using standard solutions and comparing the results with commercial sensors. The response characteristics of sensors, in terms of sensitivity and repeatability, showed good agreement with those obtained with standard equipment using the same microelectrodes.