Sistema de baixo custo para monitoramento da qualidade da água em cisternas.

Abstract

The quality of water for human consumption directly influences the well-being of its final consumers. Infectious and contagious waterborne diseases emerge as public health problems that could be avoided by the continuous inspection of water supply systems regarding compliance with the drinking standards presented in Ordinance No. 888/2021 of the Brazil Ministry of Health. Communities residing in areas further away from urban centers and which make use of water from alternative supply systems, are often excluded from actions to monitor water quality parameters, generally due to the difficulty of access and logistics for collecting samples in these locations. The pH and Turbidity parameters, used to control the quality of water in a collective alternative solution, inform about the presence of contaminating substances that may pose a risk to human health. The use of remote monitoring systems to monitor variations in these parameters is a qualitative control solution for the water that supplies these communities, allowing real-time verification of any changes in water. This work aims to develop a low-cost device to monitor in real-time the pH, turbidity and water temperature parameters in real time. For this, hardware will be created, containing sensors, controllers and power components, following the programming of the software in Arduino language, similar to the C language. The calibration and validation of the sensors were made through tests at the Sanitation Laboratory of the Federal University of Campina Grande (UFCG). The system was tested in two cisterns, located in the rural area of Alagoa Grande city, sending the data collected in real time to the ThingSpeak platform, which graphically presented information about the parameters of interest. Failures in the local internet networks, power outages and possible system decalibrations with handling, were some of the difficulties encountered with the use of the system in the field. Despite this, the results obtained proved the efficiency of the system for remote monitoring of pH, turbidity and water temperature.