Hi Bernelle,
I'm glad to find people concerned about the topic "Water" and mainly trying to treat it in an integrated way.
Very, very important your work about Wastewater Biorefineries. We need to look the wastes not as a problem but as resources that need to be redirected productively and profitably.
You mentioned very important issues in your message.
The question of the complexity of the analytical methods is very important, because the analysis (chemical, physical or biological) is the basis for any diagnosis.
For example, the analysis of chemical oxygen demand (COD), widely used in environmental monitoring, creates a toxic residue, hard to treat, containing chromium, silver and (in some cases) to mercury. It is an incoherence.
And the traditional methods are often complex and expensive.
So I have followed the philosophy of Open Source, I have worked with the idea of "Open Automation for Water". (http://www.c2o.pro.br/en/automation/index.html).
And Debian has been the platform that I have used.
But this is an issue that requires an integrated approach.
So I made an effort to organize some topics in a didactic way (I hope) at: "Water - An Integrated Approach" (http://www.c2o.pro.br/en/water/index.html).
And more recently I am trying to use the DIY philosophy and have provided this information in the project "Hacking Waters" (http://www.c2o.pro.br/hackaguas/index.html)
As I'm not fluent in English, the majority of info is in Portuguese.
Do you know any mailing list to discuss these issues in an integrated manner?
A place to discuss "Water in an Integrated Approach" including topics like quality monitoring with free software and open hardware using the DIY philosophy, as tools to projects like Wastewater Biorefineries.
Best Regards,
Markos
( O O ) +===========oOO==(_)==OOo==============+ | | | °v° Markos | | /(_)\ | | ^ ^ www.c2o.pro.br/en | +======================================+
On 16-07-2015 10:23, Bernelle Verster wrote:Hi all Many thanks for these helpful replies, they certainly gave me a great entry to start finding my feet! Andreas, will keep a look out for those BoFs at DC15. Markos, this is brilliant, thank you! I have done nothing regarding effluent monitoring, other than getting frustrated at the existing methods of effluent monitoring, which is expensive, time consuming and ridiculous environmentally - we're talking, at it's worst, Chrome-6 and boiling concentrated sulphuric acid!. I am a biochemist and chemist by training and have only in the last few years started getting used to how (chemical) engineers do things, while doing my PhD. My adventures in wastewater is only since 2012. So I still feel very intimated by yet another field to get to know, but this (dev stuff) is the next step for me! In addition to not having done anything yet, I am very interested in monitoring wastewater like one would a bioprocess - analysing, monitoring and modelling the products one could produce for value, we're calling it wastewater biorefineries [1]. In this approach, measuring total Carbon, Nitrogen and Phosphate, for example, is not enough, I want to know what compounds do they occur as? And to make it even more difficult, I want this to be do-able in backyards, shacks, out in the sticks - which is where my BioPunk, DIY-bio angle comes in (Bryan). So open, free, easily accessible. A lot of this has to do with developing the wet chemistry, but the Debian side is important too - as I think Markos understands well. There's some existing methods that can be used; GC, enzyme biosensors... which can be adapted for on-line, all the time, remotely managed. Something like HPLC is too much effort, and frankly most of the things we do in labs currently is just too complicated. I think we have it back to front. Then there's FTIR-ATR spectroscopy, that I think has potential. When I investigated it some years ago I got annoyed at how the whole thing functioned (we did have a poorly maintained, state-of-the-art machine, which didn't help - too many knobs of which none worked reliably), and I needed a reference model. I think Markos's respirometer might help me here, just with the approach used. Anyways, loooong story. I am busy with deadlines, so might only get into this again at DebConf, but am very grateful for all the input!! best regards Bernelle [1] - http://merahmas.co.za/wastewater-biorefineries On Tue, Jul 14, 2015 at 6:28 PM, Markos <markos@c2o.pro.br> wrote:Hi Bernelle, Very goog your interest in wastewater monitoring. I have also tried to do something in this area. http://www.c2o.pro.br/en/index.html And I have used Debian. And here's a respirometer using Tcl, Arduino and Debian: http://www.c2o.pro.br/en/automation/x73.html And you? What you have done about effluent monitoring? Best Regards, Markos On 13-07-2015 09:07, Bernelle Verster wrote:Hi all, I'm a proper noob, new even to coding in general, and, very very new to Debian. (So if I make a mistake/follow poor etiquette, please educate me) I'm currently checking out the debi-chem, Debian science project and debian-med places, in anticipation of going to DebConf15! I am a bioprocess engineer, and looking to get into better process control and analysis for bioprocesses, specifically wastewater treatment (with some mods there), and fungal processes (aka solid substrate fermentation), and these blends don't really have what I'm looking for. I'm not really sure what I'm looking for yet either, but data-acquisition is a start [1] I have seen the engineering packages on debi-science [2]. I am not sure if these as a rough grouping are the sort of engineering I'm doing, or more 'IT' engineering - opinions on joining this or not? My question is, is there some process engineering stuff out there I can join? And if not, how do I go about starting something? And lastly, where would these queries best be directed to? best regards Bernelle Verster (indiebio on IRC) [1] - http://blends.debian.org/science/tasks/dataacquisition [2] - http://blends.debian.org/science/tasks/engineering-- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-science-request@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org Archive: [🔎] 55A53890.5020808@c2o.pro.br" target="_blank">https://lists.debian.org/[🔎] 55A53890.5020808@c2o.pro.br