Abstract
Abstract. These days, many marine autonomous environment monitoring networks are set up in the world. These systems take advantage of existing superstructures such as offshore platforms, lightships, piers, breakwaters or are placed on specially designed buoys or underwater oceanographic structures. These systems commonly use various sensors to measure parameters such as dissolved oxygen, turbidity, conductivity, pH or fluorescence. Emphasis has to be put on the long term quality of measurements, yet sensors may face very short-term biofouling effects. Biofouling can disrupt the quality of the measurements, sometimes in less than a week. Many techniques to prevent biofouling on instrumentation are listed and studied by researchers and manufacturers. Very few of them are implemented on instruments and of those very few have been tested in situ on oceanographic sensors for deployment of at least one or two months. This paper presents a review of techniques used to protect against biofouling of in situ sensors and gives a short list and description of promising techniques.
Highlights
Biofouling has long been considered as a limiting factor in ocean monitoring requiring the placement of any materials under water
Housings and support structures are subject to fouling problems and emphasis has to be put on the long-term quality of measurements that may face very short-term biofouling effects
– in the third stage, the bacterial attachment to the substratum is consolidated through extracellular polymer production, forming a microbial film on the surface;
Summary
Biofouling has long been considered as a limiting factor in ocean monitoring requiring the placement of any materials under water. The materials used and the geometry of the sensor are driven by requirement of the measurement techniques, or mechanical or economic matters rather than optimization of biofouling protection. The protection of the sensing area of the sensor is a concern that has been tackled for the last decade, operational solutions are being implemented on commercial equipment used for long-term deployments. Numerous studies have been performed to develop biofouling protection techniques, some of them show improvement in the laboratory, in an artificial environment, but are inapplicable for sensor protection in a real seawater environment. Biofouling development is explained briefly, sensor housing protection techniques are discussed followed by sensor sensing area biofouling protection. For these last sections, operational and under development solutions will be discussed separately
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