Resumen de Design and application of a real-time water quality monitoring lab in sustainability education
Parhum Delgoshaei, Vinod K Lohani
In this paper the design process of a real-time water monitoring system developed to enhance water sustainability education isdiscussed. This system, called the LabVIEW Enabled Watershed Assessment System (LEWAS), is a real-world applicationextension of a set of data acquisition modules that were successfully implemented using LabVIEW in the first freshman engineeringcourse, Engineering Exploration ENGE 1024, at Virginia Tech. The system measures water quality and quantity data includingflow rate, pH, dissolved oxygen, conductivity and temperature—as indicators of stream health for an on-campus impaired stream—in real time. In addition, weather parameters (temperature, barometric pressure, relative humidity and precipitation) are measuredat the LEWAS site on Virginia Tech campus. The LEWAS is solar powered and uses the campus wireless network through a high-gain antenna to transmit data to remote clients in real-time. Pilot applications of the LEWAS have been implemented into ENGE1024 to address issues related to water sustainability education. Students have given positive feedback regarding the impact of real-time monitoring on increasing their environmental awareness.
