The Laboratory of Experimental Complex Systems (LECoS) of the Faculty of Fisheries and Protection of Waters of the University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice (FFPW USB) has developed a system for real-time measurement of pollution in industrial fluids for ASTOS Machinery a.s. Aš. Solutions available on the market use either camera systems as control devices or particle trapping on filters for accurate measurements. Our equipment is the first in the world to enable direct, accurate measurement of the size and number of particles and possibly their chemical composition.
The development of the device started in April 2023 following negotiations with ASTOS Machinery a.s. The simultaneous measurement of particle sizes from 10 μm up to units of mm has been an unsolved problem until now. However, this measurement is needed in all common engineering, food processing or chemistry production. The current solution is a gradual filtration using filters with different mesh sizes. The filters are then dried and weighed. This method allows no exact determination of particle distribution; particles of a significantly non-spherical shape are captured on filters with larger meshes. The filters become progressively clogged, leading to the capture of smaller particles on the larger mesh filters. Physico-chemical adsorption of small particles may also occur. A direct method of measuring particle size and shape is necessary for many reasons.
The LECoS team (Kirill Lonhus, Dalibor Štys, Renata Štysová Rychtáriková, Maksim Karpov, and Ivan Larin) used their unique knowledge in microscopy, physical chemistry, camera data processing, artificial intelligence and Bayesian statistics to design a solution and build a function sample within two months. The instrument automatically evaluates the size of particles, sorts them from background defects (bubbles, droplets), calculates their volume, and evaluates the volume occupied by the particles in the sample. In the future, it will also be possible to evaluate the spectral properties of the particles (chemical composition) and the trajectory - the mobility of the particles - without technical modification of the measurement. ASTOS Machinery a.s. Aš will deploy the instrument as a new service to its customers from September 2023.
The development was partly financed by MIT Innovation Voucher No. CZ.01.02/0.0/0.0/20_358/0028101 (Call VI). The responsible person on the part of the University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice was Renata Štysová Rychtáriková.
The participation in the International Engineering Fair 2021 in Brno was financed by the project Image Headstart ATCZ 215 from the Interreg Austria - Czech Republic programme. The responsible person on the side of the University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice was Dalibor Štys.
