23/03/2021
“Real-time monitoring and control of temperatures in an aquaponic system to ensure sustainability” is one of the projects funded by the Centre for Sustainable Smart Cities in the Faculty of Engineering, Built Environment and Information Technology at the Central University of Technology.
In order to combat falling water temperatures in an aquaponic system during winter times, the project aimed to model, design, construct, monitor and control a water heating system. The study made use of an evacuated tube system to keep the water temperature above 7⁰C during the winter season and used the internet of things for data collection and storage. The electrical engineering part of the project focuses on the modelling of the system, whereafter the system will be build and controlled by the use of a microprocessor. An ESP microcontroller is envisaged to do all the required measurements and to communicate the values via a Wi-Fi unit to a cloud server, such as Google drive. Temperatures of the main reservoir, the flood and drain as well as the deep-water grow beds must be monitored. Results from the developed model and the physical system will be compared and interpreted in order to make useful recommendations.
The project leaders are Prof Hertzog and Prof Swart. The email address for Prof Hertzog is ([email protected]).
