3D Sediments Profiling
Sediment Accumulation
The accumulation of sedimentary deposits is a common problem in sewer systems. It can cause performance issues (obstructions and floods), or sanitary issues (presence of harmful chemical and biological substances). This can be prevented by predicting the evolution of sediments inside the pipes, and applying the suitable treatment before the problem occurs
3D characterization of in-pipe sediments profile (2018-2019)
The main motivation of this project is to determine the 3D sediments profile in a pipe to be able to optimize the planning of corrective actions.
Our solution includes novel sensors for sewer pipe sediments monitoring including daily data transmission to a cloud based server by means of a 3G transceiver.
The project has been developed for Soluciones Avanzadas del Agua, Servicios y Medioambiente, a company belonging to Global Omnium group. A first deployment has been done in Rocafort, Valencia, Spain.
The system has been installed and tested in three manholes. Each device was programmed to take and send data once a day. The figure above shows a point cloud obtained by a 3D camera on one of those manholes, where the manhole and pipe has been segmented in different colours. It is also shown the position of the camera, estimated from the knowledge of manhole dimensions only. The output of the systems include the sedimentation level in the longitudinal axis of the pipe. Our system is able to provide graphs to compare the different sedimentation levels for consecutive days.
This work has been published and presented at the IWA 2020 conference in Copenhagen.
Conclusions
The main objective of this project is the 3D characterization of the sediment profile in a pipe for later improvement and maintenance optimization of the sewerage network.
This problem can be prevented by predicting the evolution of the sediments inside the collectors, and applying the appropriate treatment before the problem manifests itself.