High-level water quality monitoring in South Africa

Situated in the Mpumalanga province of South Africa Xstrata Coal South Africa (XCSA) runs several open cut and underground mining operations producing thermal coal.
For environmental management purposes they have to collect and monitor water quality data. OTT Southern Africa was approached to supply and install a remote monitoring solution.
Especially the installation of a multiparameter probe in the Olifants River for which 25 m of protection pipe along steep rocks had to be fixed was a challenge!

The mining company wanted to record stream flow data for water license reports, water quality parameters for environmental reports and of course system performance data. An existing defunct remote monitor system had to be replaced and a new database for remote monitors had to be established.

The technical needs were high-level:

• Technology designed specifically for environmental monitoring applications
• Robust in construction for long-term deployment
• Long-life internal power source
• Small installation footprint
• Easy to install and maintain
• Remote data transmission capabilities; GSM or satellite
• Software system that is compatible with customer’s IT infrastructure
• Flexible data management and data handling

Hardware components and functions:

• 6 OTT ecolog 800 units were deployed at 5 stream measuring points and 1 borehole site.
• Parameters are recorded hourly and reported daily via GSM/GPRS using FTP transfer to a secure server hosted by OTT.
• The Ecolog800 units are housed in structures designed and manufactured by XCSA as per OTT recommendations.

Software components and functions:

• OTT Hydras3 + RX software was installed on a local PC at the Environmental Management offices.
• Data is retrieved via an internet connection and the database is populated automatically.
• Hydras3 software provides graphical interface and data export functions into other formats (text, Excel).

The Kanongat water quality monitoring system:
In addition to the XCSA remote monitor system, integrated into this project was the implimentation of a remote station to monitor water quality para-meters, located on the banks of the Olifants River at Kanongat inside the Loskop Nature Reserve.
This system is quite different from the OTT ecolog 800 but still allows the data to be presented on the same OTT platform and managed by XCSA for reporting purposes to the forum.

The system contains the following components:

• Hydrolab DS5X Sonde with:
• pH, EC, Temp, Depth & DO
• OTT NetDL1000 IP Datalogger