The first 4 out of the 8 automatic water environment monitoring stations, produced by the Da Nang Centre of Integrated Circuits (CENTIC) under the municipal Department of Information and Communications, were recently put into operation in Da Nang.

CENTIC engineers explaining the feature of an automatic water environment monitoring stations at a recent event.

Powered by solar energy, the stations are part of a 10 billion VND (440,000 USD) project which is funded by the city-based Trung Nam JSC.

Under the project, a total of 8 monitoring stations are installed in Phu Loc River, the lakes of March 29 Park, Xuan Ha A, Phuoc Ly, Bau Tram, and Do Xu, plus extended Hoa Xuan E2 Zone, and Nguyen Phuoc Tan.

According to CENTIC, the remaining stations will be put into use very soon.

The practical project aims to monitor the water quality of the targeted places mentioned above while supervising the quality of wastewater discharged from industrial establishments.  This, thereby, will help to ensure environmental sanitation in the city.

Mr Pham Hoai Duc, the CENTIC Deputy Director, said the 4 already-installed stations mark an advance in the environmental protection in Da Nang, and Viet Nam as a whole.

The locally-made stations feature the shape of a float which can easily move to many different positions when necessary to serve monitoring. 

Operating automatically around the clock, the stations can measure many different parameters: pH, ORP, electricity conductivity, turbidity, chlorine, temperature and suspended solids content, even the chemical oxygen demand, and the amount of dissolved ammonium.

As the station is anchored and floats on the water’s surface, it is designed in a way to withstand severe weather conditions (sun, rain and strong wind).  Notably, it is corrosion resistant and durable.

By analysing the indexes from the monitoring stations, environment management agencies are informed about unusual changes of water quality in order to make reasonable decisions to protect the water environment. 

In particular, thanks to these indexes, it is easer to exactly identify the main reason for mass fish deaths and other related incidents in the locality. 

Apart from using highly-precise sensors of the US’s HACH group, the rest of the automatic water environment monitoring system is made by CENTIC staff members.

In particular, the operation of the whole system is based on the efficiency of the Internet of Things (IoT), using modern technologies in the ongoing fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0).

IoT is the inter-networking of physical devices, vehicles (also referred to as ‘connected devices’ and ‘smart devices’), buildings, and other items embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators, and network connectivity which enables these objects to collect and exchange data.

In reality, other localities in Viet Nam have to import expensive environment monitoring solutions which are developed by foreign engineers, and, in many cases, they don’t fit Vietnamese circumstances indeed.  

Also, if there are any technical problem facing these machines, it costs much time and expenses to contact their manufacturers for dealing with. 

Meanwhile, it is very convenient to conduct maintenance work on the ‘made in Da Nang’ water environment monitoring stations.