Strengthening oil pollution monitoring system in aquatic environment through development of IoT-based Oil-Water Separator Device

Abstract

Oil spills are a serious pollution problem in water ecosystems, causing significant damage to living things and the environment. The demand for devices to handle oil remediation is increasing due to the frequent occurrence of oil spills. To date, numerous works have been reported to address this pollution problem, but most of them do not utilize Internet of Things (IoT) technology. Having an IoT system of this kind would improve operational efficiency by providing real-time data, alerts, and notifications of oil pollution through monitoring systems. This study presents the development of an IoT-based automatic oil-water separator device to support an oil pollution monitoring system in water ecosystems. The built device consists of sensors, a microcontroller, and an actuator, with the capability to automatically detect oil pollution and perform water-oil separation. The device incorporates a monitoring system. The water-oil separation was carried out by applying semi-permeable membrane nanotechnology. Moreover, the device has undergone a series of oily-water separation experiments to simulate oil pollution, achieving an oil separation efficiency of 62.8% (on average) with good repeatability. Additionally, the automatic device is developed with IoT pairing with a website application for an online monitoring system. Users can monitor the process using a personal computer or smartphone via the web/mobile application at any time and from any place. It is of interest to explore this further since it offers an effective and implementable method to solve oil pollution problems in real-world applications.