Analysis of ammonium concentration using TiO2-based sensor system and fuzzy logic approach

Abstract

Ammonia is poisonous and harmful to environment. Ammonia is the most common pollutant in water streams and most of them come from agricultural, industrial, and domestic wastewater. The biggest problem for current method in ammonia monitoring detection is too much time taken to examine the water quality and the process is complicated. This is because the machine is not portable and the examination cannot be done at the measurement site. In addition, the effect of different concentration of ammonia and the distance of UV needs to be analyze to improve the measurement of output voltage to its optimum. The objectives of this study are to develop a portable PEC-based UV-assisted ammonia monitoring system using the TiO2-based sensor and analyze the data using fuzzy logic approach. This can help to shorten the time of examination of the water quality, portable to everywhere and can give more precise estimation of ammonia concentration. The basic item of this experimental setup are ammonium samples, ultraviolet (UV) light, TiO2-based sensor in photoelectrochemical cell (PEC) structure, microcontroller interfacing system and fuzzy logic system. We executed an experiment that measure the voltage generated with digital multimeter and our ammonia detection system using Arduino and make sure the error of voltage differences between them is low to make sure the output is accurate. Then, we varied the ammonia concentration and the distance of UV light from TiO2-based sensor to measure the output voltage. The measured data was analyzed using fuzzy logic approach to estimate the output voltage. Lastly, the fuzzy logic method is also used in reverse the calculation to predict the ammonia concentration based on the output voltage and UV distance. UV assisted TiO2-based ammonia sensor in PEC structure was successfully fabricated and developed into a portable device for measuring the voltage at different ammonia concentrations. The fuzzy logic approach for estimating the output voltage was successfully designed. As for the conclusion, analysis of ammonium concentration using TiO2-based sensor system and fuzzy logic approach can be used to advance the ammonia monitoring and estimate the output in shorter time.