On-Line Realtime Water Quality Monitoring and Control for Swimming Pools

Effective swimming pool water quality monitoring and control systems are important to safeguard public health and for bather comfort. Most Irish swimming pool monitoring systems rely heavily on manual methods for sampling, testing and data recording of important parameters. Microbiological testing is infrequent and results can often take days. The goal of this research is to develop a water quality monitoring and control system with real time data logging, automatic data analysis, remote monitoring and control, microbiological sampling capabilities and online connectivity. National Instruments hardware and its software package LabView form the basis of the monitoring and control system. Several sensors measure the main water parameters affecting disinfection and overall water balance: temperature, pH level, total dissolved solids, turbidity, chlorine level and redox potential. Water hardness is measured manually due to the prohibitive cost of an automatic system. The LabView package and related hardware controls the chemical dosing of the pool in order to maintain these parameters within their recommended optimum levels. An investigation is also being carried out into the development of a biosensor to detect E. coli, as it is the best indicator of faecal contamination in water. The flexibility of the technology used in this research means that it has numerous other potential applications, such as: drinking water treatment, waste water treatment, industrial process control, environmental study and monitoring.