AQUAMONITOR Project
Dissolved CO2 measurements
Environmental concerns
Global emissions of CO2 and other anthropogenic greenhouse gases have led Mankind to increasing climatic changes. Aside from temperature rises, ocean uptake of CO2 leads to ocean acidification with severe consequences to calcifying organisms and therefore to the existing food chain, among other nefarious effects. However, ocean acidification is a complex problem as the chemical reaction system of CO2 is intricate. Improved monitoring systems to help study this phenomena are extremely necessary, with improved capabilities such as remote, long term data logging and more importantly to ocean application, immune to intereferences from high ionic strength solutions, e.g, high salinity.
Hyperintensive aquaculture new monitoring requirements
New hyper intensive aquaculture systems such as recirculating (RAS) or shallow raceways (SRS) are praised for their environmental and economic returns when compared
with standard flow-through systems. However, this increased performance have a cost: a need for a more rigorous monitoring system as the time to cope with system failures is drastically reduced and the derived economic damages, due to the high fish density, are vastly superior.
Current technology
Existing technology for dissolved CO2 measurement is not adequate for most applications for a multitude of reasons, to name a few:
Too large;
Too expensive;
Single point;
Operate offline;
Time consuming;
Require grab samples;
Agitation required;
Multiple interferences, in particular, high ionic strength.