Portable Nutrient Data Collection System

Purpose

This project could be very beneficial in several capacities, most notably in agriculture and environmental scientists. Agriculture could use this system to ensure that the water they are using is free of any harmful chemicals. This could help farmers gain better yields from crops, use their resources more efficiently (not harming crops with bad water and having to replace them), and ultimately have better financial results from their business. Environmental studies would be able to use this system to analyze potential pollutions in hard to reach areas with other equipment. With this portable system, they would be able to keep a watch on problem areas. Also, using this system, with the analysis of the spectrometer these scientists would know exactly what is causing problems in the environment. This means that they should be able to find a solution quickly. Society would benefit greatly from both uses of this project. There would be more food coming from farms and that food would be free of the harmful chemicals that would be detected by the system. Environmentalists finding pollution in water sources and dealing with the issues would lead to a cleaner environment and creating a cleaner place for people to live.

Team May1719

Client: Professor Que, Advisor: Professor Qiao

Project Statement

This project deals with a portable system that will be used to analyze water in the field. The purpose of this is to determine whether there are certain nutrients in the water in certain locations. This system has two methods of testing the water. The first is sending a high voltage across a small reservoir of water that essentially vaporizes the water creating a light that goes into a fiber optic cable and into a spectrometer. The second method is shining a strong enough light through the water sample that then goes into a fiber optic cable connected to the spectrometer. After the data is collected by the spectrometer, it will be sent through our system and out to an app for the user to easily view the data.