Abstract
We developed a low-cost automatic diagnosis system for water quality in cooling towers to measure the concentrations of key ingredients such as $Ca^{2+}$, $Cl^-$, $PO{_4}^{3-}$, and $Fe^{2+}$. $Ca^{2+}$, and $Cl^-$ are the main factors that cause the generation of scale, corrosion, and sludge in water pipes. $PO{_4}^{3-}$ prevents corrosion, sludge and scale by inhibiting the ions (i.e., $Ca^{2+}$, $Cl^-$) from sticking to the pipes. $Fe^{2+}$ is an indicator of pipe corrosion. The proposed system consists of a microprocessor, a specimen container and heater, a precision pump, relays and valves, LED optical sources, and photo detectors. It automatically collects water samples and carries out pretreatment for determining the concentration of each chemical, and then estimates the concentration of each ion using low-cost LED optical sources and detectors. Experimental results showed that the accuracy of the proposed system is sufficiently high for water quality diagnosis and management of cooling towers, demonstrating the possibility of the proposed system's wide usage in real environments.
