ECO-SOS · Development of Emerging Contaminants – Hybrid Soft Sensor for on-line monitoring of contaminants of emerging concern in water

Development of Emerging Contaminants – Hybrid Soft Sensor for on-line monitoring of contaminants of emerging concern in water

The need for safe drinking water and a clean aquatic environment has led to the development of effective water supply and sewer systems over time. These systems have been successfully monitoring and removing pathogens, heavy metals, and various toxic substances. However, the water resources and especially the drinking water in Europe and globally face new challenges with emerging micropollutants, originating from pharmaceuticals, personal care products, plastics, flame retardants, pesticides etc. The water and wastewater treatment plants do not fully remove or eliminate them; so, they accumulate in the water resources leading to higher concentrations increasing the health and environmental risks. Initially, they were overlooked because they were present at very low concentrations (nano or micrograms per Liter). However, research has shown that these seemingly insignificant compounds can have harmful effects on living organisms, including humans. Because of this potential threat, these compounds are now referred to as Contaminants of Emerging Concerns (CECs). In 2019, the European Union (EU) conducted a thorough evaluation of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) and related directives, recognizing the importance of detecting CECs in European waters. To address these concerns, new EU recommendations are set to closely monitor water and wastewater. Because of that, the stricter requirements could be put in place to remove these harmful substances and protect human health and the environment. The new requirements present few major challenges. One of them is that current analytical methods are costly because CECs are present in extremely low concentrations, requiring very high precision for detection. Moreover, these methods are time consuming, because it involves collecting water samples from various sources, transporting them to laboratories, and conducting specialized tests using complex analytical methods. Additionally, we still don't fully understand how CECs are removed during water and wastewater treatments, which delays the optimization of the treatment process to effectively remove these contaminants. To solve this problem, ECO SOS aimed to combine the experience in the development of real-time control and monitoring systems with knowledge of the analysis and removal of CECs during treatment processes by creating a soft sensor. They are also called virtual sensors or surrogate sensors. It is a smart estimation method of difficult and expensive parameters via cheap and widely available physical online sensors. Powerful statistical tools, artificial intelligence and machine learning concepts have proven to establish algorithms discovering hidden correlations among the two types of parameters. The hypothesis of this research project was that it can be possible for soft sensors to detect CECs in water by combining data from multiple sensors and advanced analytical methods (fluorescence, liquid chromatography, DNA sequencing). The action also included an industrial secondment in DOSCON SA, Norway as well as hands-on and transferable skills training.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union