Project Description:
Excess nitrogen in the Chesapeake Bay causes eutrophication, low-oxygen zones, and loss of aquatic biodiversity. As a result, green stormwater infrastructures (GSI), have been developed as a state requirement to reduce the nutrient loads entering the Bay. One of these is the bioreactor garden which removes nitrogen through two biological processes: nitrification and denitrification. A number of parameters that can possibly affect the removal efficiency; including dissolved oxygen (DO), pH, oxidation-reduction potential (ORP), and electrical conductivity (EC) could indicate whether the nitrification and denitrification provided sufficient treatment of nitrogen. Alongside Green Mechanics LLC, our team aimed to determine if the effluent from the bioreactor garden meets nitrogen standards based on a correlation between nitrogen levels and an alternate parameter stated above. The team built a mini bioreactor garden to test its effluent and compared data to a previous experiment on stormwater which underwent similar biological processes. After establishing a correlation, we would connect the relevant sensor to a Raspberry Pi which can be connected to the existing sensor system to automate discharge or extended retention.
