Grant: Engage Plus Grants for Colleges

In Canada, small-scale wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), particularly those located in remote communities, demonstrate a significant need for wastewater treatment monitoring systems with continuous, real-time capabilities. A lack of such continuous monitoring poses a significant threat to public health and the environment. Currently, Northern and remote communities are disproportionately at risk due to factors such as aging facilities and the unavailability of qualified maintenance staff. A.U.G. Signals Ltd. has developed an Intelligent Water Surveillance system for drinking water, which provides accurate, fast-response solutions to end users. This technology has helped 19 First Nations communities in Ontario achieve real-time continuous drinking water monitoring. Following the promising results of AUG's NSERC Engage collaboration with Fleming College's Centre for Advancement of Water and Wastewater Technologies (CAWT), the company wishes to continue its collaboration to achieve further efficiencies. AUG's prototype will be recalibrated for further pilot testing to improve the accuracy and consistency of its optical sensors and analytic algorithms. This will result in the enhancement and optimization of the system's hardware, user interface, cloud-based data platform and overall water quality monitoring performance.