Publication: Biofouling effect on total dissolved solid measurement
Date
2023-07-06
Authors
Lee, Jun Jie
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Abstract
Water is essential for our daily life. Therefore, it is important to control our water quality for health considerations. TDS measurement is one of the common approaches to studying water quality by measuring the TDS value, which refers to the total concentration of dissolved substances in the water. However, some external factors may lead to inaccuracy of TDS measurement, such as the fouling effect (for example, deposition of salts and solidification of wax) and the biofouling effect (for example, growth of algae or barnacles). Therefore, it is important to evaluate the measuring capability of the TDS sensor to ensure the accuracy of the TDS sensor. In this study, both systematic error and random error are determined to obtain the optimal accuracy of the TDS sensors by comparing them with the TDS meter. After that, the chosen TDS sensor is used to measure the TDS value of the samples with non-growing and growing biofouling effects repetitively to obtain accurate results. The samples with non-growing biofouling effects include Mountain Dew, Sprite, Mirinda Orange, Evian, Fanta (Strawberry), saline water, sugar solution, and corn starch water while the sample with
growing biofouling effect is algae solution.