Pyroscience demonstrates benefits of new antifouling sensors for long-term pH and oxygen monitoring

Long-term monitoring in marine environments using sensors faces significant challenges, including the issue of biofouling. Biofouling occurs when microorganisms, algae, or invertebrates attach to sensor surfaces, causing sensor drift, reduced accuracy, and increased maintenance requirements. Long-term data reliability is impacted and it can develop over shorter periods.
Pyroscience recently released a white paper that tested the performance, reliability, and durability of PyroScience AquapHOx© loggers in dynamic coastal environments. The study evaluated the performance of PyroScience AquapHOx© stand-alone loggers equipped with pH and oxygen sensor caps with a new antifouling material. Deployments were carried out at two different locations: Kiel Fjord (Western Baltic Sea, Germany) and Rovinj (Northern Adriatic Sea, Croatia) to assess the effectiveness of the antifouling solutions in preventing biofouling and ensuring long-term accurate sensor data collection in challenging coastal shallow water environments.

Overall, all tested sensors performed well under challenging conditions in both Kiel and Rovinj, though some drift was observed throughout the deployment periods. As expected, newer sensors equipped with antifouling protection exhibited better performance, maintaining higher data accuracy and reducing the need for frequent maintenance compared to standard sensors without this feature. These findings highlight the improvement of Pyroscience sensor’s antifouling strategies in long-term oceanographic monitoring, particularly in nutrient-rich and biofouling-prone coastal and shallow environments.

The coastal applications presented in the paper represent very challenging shallow water environments for environmental sensors, such as those used for monitoring pH and DO. In open ocean and deep-sea applications, both biofouling and potential drift effects are expected to be significantly lower.

In addition, PyroScience also offers AquapHOx© real-time data transmitters compatible with optical pH and oxygen sensors equipped with a novel antifouling layer. These transmitters enable remote monitoring with real-time data transmission. Unlike stand-alone loggers, however, the transmitters require an external data logger and battery for operation. PyroScience provides a pigtail interface cable to connect AquapHOx© transmitters to third-party systems.

 

If you are interested, you can read more about these pH and DO loggers and antifouling results in the white paper,

PyroScience White Paper