Biofouling protection for marine environmental sensors

Abstract

Abstract. These days, many marine autonomous environment monitoring networks are set up in the world. These systems take advantage of existing superstructures such as offshore platforms, lightships, piers, breakwaters or are placed on specially designed buoys or underwater oceanographic structures. These systems commonly use various sensors to measure parameters such as dissolved oxygen, turbidity, conductivity, pH or fluorescence. Emphasis has to be put on the long term quality of measurements, yet sensors may face very short-term biofouling effects. Biofouling can disrupt the quality of the measurements, sometimes in less than a week.Many techniques to prevent biofouling on instrumentation are listed and studied by researchers and manufacturers. Very few of them are implemented on instruments and of those very few have been tested in situ on oceanographic sensors for deployment of at least one or two months. This paper presents a review of techniques used to protect against biofouling of in situ sensors and gives a short list and description of promising techniques.

Nanocomposite thin film of Ag nanoparticles embedded in amorphous Al 2 O 3 on optical sensors windows: Synthesis, characterization and targeted application towards transparency and anti-biofouling

“…The protection of environmental sensors is an important issue in so far as such sensors have to operate continuously and autonomously during several months to collect high quality data [1]. In the case of immersed marine and riverine sensors, aquatic biofouling; i.e.…”

“…The authors report that intensity of UVR, but mostly duration of exposure in an hourly cycle (thus impacting operation time) are the most critical parameters to slow down the development of biofouling. Delauney and Compère [1] and more recently, Zhang and Zhang [10] compiled the various lenscleaning techniques which have been studied by academia and optical sensor manufacturers.…”

Development and Deployment of a Microfluidic Platform for Water Quality Monitoring

“…In addition to being cost-effective, the copper content was expected to be of benefit in terms of protecting the membrane filter from biofouling. Copper, copper alloys and copper compounds are widely used as biofouling inhibitors for sensors and other devices deployed in aquatic environments [36,37]. The sensor intake was also located at the bottom of the sensor unit.…”

“…The membrane filter used was a hydrohophilic polyethersulfone membrane designed for biological sample preparation, with low protein binding properties [38]. As attachment of macromolecules (organic and inorganic) and microorganisms represent the initial stages in the biofouling process [36,37], it was hoped that this combination of measures would delay and/or limit biofouling of the filter surface. The redesigned sample intake/filter assembly is shown in Fig.…”

“…In general, however, biofouling is likely to represent a practical limitation to the (maintenance-free) deployable lifetime of this sensor and similar systems. Therefore it is essential that developers of water monitoring technology are familiar with the range of established and emerging [36,37,[41][42][43][44] approaches to the prevention or limitation of biofouling, and work collaboratively with researchers engaged in this area, which is a key to achieving the long deployable lifetimes which will ultimately facilitate the broader uptake of in-situ sensing technologies.…”