Application of Time-Lapse Ion Exchange Resin Sachets (TIERS) for Detecting Illegal Effluent Discharge in Mixed Industrial and Agricultural Areas, Taiwan

Abstract

Many factories were built and scattered around the farmlands in Taiwan due to inappropriate land use planning. Illegal effluent discharge of high concentration of metals from the nearby factories has been threatening the farmlands, causing damages to agricultural production, food safety, and human health. Sampling was mostly responsible for monitoring the water quality of the agricultural environment; however, the analysis is of high cost and time consuming. Due to uneasy controlled environmental factors (i.e., illegal effluents) and time-consuming and expensive traditional analysis techniques (i.e., atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS), atomic fluorescence spectrometry (AFS), inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES), inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES), and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS)), we develop a fast-screening method, which is the combination of ion exchange resins and the portable X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy to identify the source of contaminants in a mixed industrial and agricultural area in Taoyuan County, Taiwan. The time-lapse ion exchange resin sachet (TIERS) is a non-woven bag that is filled with resins and placed in the irrigation channels for continuously absorbing the metal and trace elements in water. The standardization ratios of Cu/Sr and Zn/Sr were calculated as the pollutant indicators for fast-screening the highly polluted sites of exceedance probability of 2.27% in the monitoring area. The TIERS is verified to detect the metal and trace element concentration in an efficient and sufficient way.

A multiple model approach for evaluating the performance of time-lapse capsules in trapping heavy metals from water bodies

“…The concentration of the adsorbed heavy metals on the time-lapse capsules could also be rapidly determined by the nondestructive X-ray uorescence core-scanning (XRF-CS) technique. 3,11 According to the results reported by Huang et al, 3 the concentrations of heavy metals determined by the XRF-CS (the increase on the resin) and the conventional analytical method (the reduction in water) exhibited excellent correlations (R 2 > 0.97) even at a short scanning time (<1 s). By doing so, one could identify the potential hot spots of illegal discharge in situ and then keep deploying more time-lapse capsules upstream until the discharge point of the industry is located.…”

“…The detailed procedure for the preparation of time-lapse capsules can be found in our previous studies. 3,11…”

Supramolecular Ion-Exchange Resins Based on Calixarene Derivatives for Pollutant Removal from Aquatic Environmental Samples

“…The breakthrough curve of the fixed-bed adsorption could be modeled through three models, i.e. Thomas, Bohart-Adams, and Yoon and Nelson models [120,22]. The Thomas model predicts plug flow of adsorbate through the stationary phase thus no axial dispersion happens [135].…”

Establishment of an Automatic Real-Time Monitoring System for Irrigation Water Quality Management

“…In order to overcome this critical issue, several innovative inspection technologies, such as time-lapse capsules [7,8], have been developed and deployed in the field tests for identifying the patterns of the heavy metals from the illegal discharge. Apart from the innovative inspection, the integration of continuous automatic sampling techniques and cloud technologies was imperative to provide the real-time monitoring for identifying the sources of pollution and improving the irrigation water quality management.…”