Water quality monitoring in aquaculture using portable mass spectrometry

Project aim: The project aims to design, build, assemble and test a novel membrane sample inlet for a portable mass spectrometer to provide real-time monitoring of important water quality parameters in aquaculture.

 

About the project: Majority of modern closed containment fish farms such as recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) technology use different types of sensors in fish tanks to monitor parameters of interest. Key parameters include dissolved gases, sulphide pollutants and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Major focus of this work will be on VOCs released from cyanobacteria and fungi that naturally occurs in fish tanks, which are still analysed in commercial analytical laboratories using gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC/MS) since no commercial sensors are sensitive and selective enough to detect them on-site. Such compounds cause heavy economic losses in the aquaculture industry due to unpleasant smell and taste that they give to the fish. To maintain low concentrations of these compounds, expensive water pumping technology is used, members of staff to collect water samples and bringing them to the laboratory for costly analysis. Therefore, if concept is proven for identification of target compounds, a significantly lower cost sensing solution could be offered. Innovation in this work will include modelling, build, assembly and test of a custom membrane sample inlet with different membrane materials for fast separation of technically challenging VOCs.