New probes have lower power needs, improving usability for long-term monitoring

FROM Turner Designs, GOLD SPONSOR OF 2018 WALPA CONFERENCE

Water quality monitoring instruments used for long-term deployments or integrated with platforms such as moorings, profilers, or monitoring stations usually need to meet several requirements, the most important one being low power consumption. Low power consumption is critical because these platforms typically use limited-power sources such as batteries, solar or wind to power multiple instruments. Therefore, reducing the power demands of these sensors greatly increases their usability and adds robustness to the data sets collected.

Turner Designs is very excited to introduce our ultra-low power C-FLUOR probes, a family of single-wavelength probes used for measuring in situ fluorescence and turbidity. Maximum power requirements for these probes are 12 mA current draw at 12 VDC (less than 144 mW), covering a broad range of applications: in vivo chlorophyll, crude oil, CDOM/FDOM (dissolved organic material), blue/green algae, fluorescein dye, rhodamine dye, optical brighteners, and turbidity. All-titanium construction as an anti-corrosion measure further equips these probes to provide quality results for extended deployments. C-FLUOR probes are ideal for integration into multi-parameter sondes or platforms to aid research in harmful algal blooms (HAB), dye tracing, wastewater, oil detection and general environmental studies.