Designing and implementation of internet of things (IoT) on physico-biological treatment of wastewater

Abstract

The use of Internet of Things (IoT) in industries is not new; however, the amalgamation of IoT and Biotechnology is still less explored. IoT in wastewater treatment comes with a full suite including cloud and its corresponding ecosystem. The available cloud-based systems are advantageous, but costly and tightly coupled to their own cloud infrastructure. Opportunities are limited for the creation of a hybrid/multiple cloud model as it's difficult to integrate with the legacy system(s) and/or customized systems. The current investigation focuses on designing architechture of an open source IoT platform on an effluent treatment plant (ETP) protoype of textile industry. The designed prototype includes physical (adsorption) and biological (Rotating Biological Contactor, RBC, immobilized with white rot fungus) processes. IoT has been used for automated data monitoring of pH and ultrasound (for effluent flow from one tank to another, with respect to the water level, for processing). The process operated under an optimized pH (6.53±0.15) with reduction of representative wastewater quality parameters, biological & chemical oxygen demand, total dissolved solids, total suspended solids and optical density by 78.9, 52.15, 91.6, 20.3 and 88.8%, respectively. The findings demonstrated the reliability of the designed system and the analytics on treatment facilities.