Advanced Sensors for Environmental Water Monitoring

Abstract

Nowadays, water pollution significant jeopardizes the continuous clean drinking water supply that results in the damage of human health, and economy development. Adequate sensors are not only able to greatly benefit the treatment process but also can continuous monitoring of the watershed for contaminates which help effectively control pollution and manage the water resources. However, the commercial available sensors are expensive and required frequently maintenance. These limitations make these sensors not sufficient in continuous water monitoring application. In this thesis, sensors for some of the essential sensing targets including dissolved oxygen, phosphate and chlorine are developed. These sensors are low cost, easy operation and minimum maintenance required. These advantages make the sensors suitable to be applied in the continuously water quality monitoring system in multiple water systems such as drinking water, surface water and wastewater. Furthermore, an all solid state rechargeable palladium nanostructure based reference electrode and a universal dopamine/PEG/albumin antifouling coating technique are also studied in order to further extend the lifetime of these sensor thus reduces the need of maintenance.