In this paper, we propose a novel approach in hardware and software architecture design for implementation of remote laboratories for automatic control. In our contribution, we show the solution with ...flexible connectivity at back-end, providing features of multipurpose usage with different types of experimental devices, and fully configurable client side application at front-end. The physical setup and communication principles of hardware architecture are based on two types of devices: the programmable logic controllers and industrial network routers. The user interface of client application is designed as a Web page, powered by optimized JavaScript, using the sophisticated on-the-fly content generation. To prove the suitability of the architecture, we compare it with other existing approaches of remote laboratory design. We evaluate their benefits and weaknesses, especially in terms of expense, implementation difficulty, and versatility of usage. In this paper, we also show a detailed example of remote laboratory implementation based on new architecture for thermo-optical educational system and provide three other examples of developed remote laboratories. Evaluation of remote laboratory usage and its benefits is provided to demonstrate the learning value of proposed architecture in education process.
•586 of the studied 2362 contaminants were detected in the Danube River Basin.•Risk assessment prioritized 12 legacy and 33 emerging contaminants.•The 33 emerging contaminants are Danube River Basin ...Specific Pollutants.•20 performance indicators were checked in wastewater treatment plants.•The plants showed medium or efficient removal for 70% of the studied compounds.
A state-of-the-art wide-scope target screening of 2,362 chemicals and their transformation products (TPs) was performed in samples collected within the Joint Danube Survey 4 (JDS4) performed in 2019. The analysed contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) included three major categories: plant protection products (PPPs), industrial chemicals and pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs). In total, 586 CECs were detected in the samples including 158 PPPs, 71 industrial chemicals, 348 PPCPs, and 9 other chemicals. A wide-variety of sample matrices were collected including influent and effluent wastewater, groundwater, river water, sediment and biota. Forty-five CECs (19 PPPs, 8 industrial chemicals, 18 PPCPs) were detected at levels above their ecotoxicological thresholds (lowest predicted no-effect concentration (PNEC) values) in one or more of the investigated environmental compartments, indicating potential adverse effects on the impacted ecosystems. Among them 12 are legacy substances; 33 are emerging and qualify as potential Danube River Basin Specific Pollutants (RBSPs). Moreover, the efficiency of the wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) was evaluated using 20 selected performance indicator chemicals. WWTPs showed effective removal (removal rate ≥80%) and medium removal (removal rate 25–80%) for 6 and 8 of the indicator chemicals, respectively. However, numerous contaminants passed the WWTPs with a lower removal rate. Further investigation on performance of WWTPs is suggested at catchment level to improve their removal efficiency. WWTP effluents are proven to be one of the major sources of contaminants in the Danube River Basin (DRB). Other sources include sewage discharges, industrial and agricultural activities. Continuous monitoring of the detected CECs is suggested to ensure water quality of the studied area.
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Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) represent an important input of contaminants in the environment. Therefore, it is critical to continuously monitor the performance of WWTPs to take appropriate ...action and avoid an influx of contaminants in the environment. In this study, a battery of seven in vitro bioassays covering a selected spectrum of toxicity effects is proposed for quality control of wastewater effluents. The bioassays address mixture toxicity, which is the combined adverse effect of multiple contaminants and can act as an early warning system. The proposed battery was applied to samples from 11 WWTPs of representative technology from the Danube River Basin (DRB). The order of toxic effects in terms of extent of exceedance of effect-based trigger values (EBTs) was PAH (PAH activity) > PXR (xenobiotic metabolism) > ERα (estrogenic activity) > PPARγ > Nrf2 (oxidative stress) > anti-AR > GR. A mitigation plan for WWTP operators based on EBT exceedance is proposed. This study demonstrates that the proposed effect-based monitoring battery is a complementary tool to the chemical analysis approach. A regular application of such time- and cost-effective bioanalytical tools in the WWTPs of the DRB is proposed to provide a ‘safety net’ for aquatic ecosystems.
Background
Prioritisation of chemical pollutants is a major challenge for environmental managers and decision-makers alike, which is essential to help focus the limited resources available for ...monitoring and mitigation actions on the most relevant chemicals. This study extends the original NORMAN prioritisation scheme beyond target chemicals, presenting the integration of semi-quantitative data from retrospective suspect screening and expansion of existing exposure and risk indicators. The scheme utilises data retrieved automatically from the NORMAN Database System (NDS), including candidate substances for prioritisation, target and suspect screening data, ecotoxicological effect data, physico-chemical data and other properties. Two complementary workflows using target and suspect screening monitoring data are applied to first group the substances into six action categories and then rank the substances using exposure, hazard and risk indicators. The results from the ‘target’ and ‘suspect screening’ workflows can then be combined as multiple lines of evidence to support decision-making on regulatory and research actions.
Results
As a proof-of-concept, the new scheme was applied to a combined dataset of target and suspect screening data. To this end, > 65,000 substances on the NDS, of which 2579 substances supported by target wastewater monitoring data, were retrospectively screened in 84 effluent wastewater samples, totalling > 11 million data points. The final prioritisation results identified 677 substances as high priority for further actions, 7455 as medium priority and 326 with potentially lower priority for actions. Among the remaining substances, ca. 37,000 substances should be considered of medium priority with uncertainty, while it was not possible to conclude for 19,000 substances due to insufficient information from target monitoring and uncertainty in the identification from suspect screening. A high degree of agreement was observed between the categories assigned via target analysis and suspect screening-based prioritisation. Suspect screening was a valuable complementary approach to target analysis, helping to prioritise thousands of substances that are insufficiently investigated in current monitoring programmes.
Conclusions
This updated prioritisation workflow responds to the increasing use of suspect screening techniques. It can be adapted to different environmental compartments and can support regulatory obligations, including the identification of specific pollutants in river basins and the marine environments, as well as the confirmation of environmental occurrence levels predicted by modelling tools.
Graphical Abstract
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•Heat exchangers have non-linear and asymmetric behaviour.•Six robust control approaches are used for robust controller design.•Six robust controllers control the laboratory heat ...exchanger with uncertainty.•H2, H∞ controllers are the best according to design, structure and performance.•Robust controllers are successfully used in a real-time application.
This paper aims to show that various robust controllers can be successfully used in practical applications. Six robust control techniques were used for controller design, i.e. robust PI controller design based on plotting the stability boundary in the plane of controller parameters, the design method based on the small gain theorem, the H2, H∞, H2/H∞ control syntheses and the µ-synthesis with D-K iteration. The design approaches were selected based on authors’ previous theoretical work and developed robust controllers were implemented for a laboratory heat exchanger that had non-linear and asymmetric behaviour and could be modelled as an uncertain system. The uncertainty in the controlled process included in the process gain, the time-constant and the time-delay took into account incomplete knowledge of process parameters, parameter changes, and measurement noise. The designed controllers were implemented in laboratory conditions and real-time control of a laboratory heat exchanger was realized. The control results achieved using various robust controllers were compared via three quality criteria. Taking into account the controller design, controller structure, robustness and performance, the H2, H∞ controllers are reasonable compromises between the design demands, structure complexity, robustness and control performance. The results obtained on the laboratory heat exchanger confirmed that robust controllers can be successfully used in real-time applications and using of them is able to assure good control performance.
This paper presents a lightweight SCADA system eLab that is based on open-source and affordable hardware/software technologies. The primary purpose of eLab is to provide an easy means for researchers ...and students to perform laboratory experiments, without requirements for extensive configuration on the side of the user. The architecture of the system consists of several functional parts. I/O nodes are hardware devices that directly connect and electrically control sensors and actuators of laboratory equipment. For this purpose, an implementer can either use a dedicated MCU, such as Arduino board, a single-board computer like Raspberry Pi, or any device with UART communication capabilities. The central part of eLab is a SCADA master, i.e., the computer that serves all the functionalities required by a SCADA system. The SCADA software is implemented in server-side JavaScript (Node.js). The communication between I/O nodes and SCADA master is served via XBee radio modules. The master computer acts as a communication gateway between I/O nodes and other parts of the system. The gateway provides a dedicated RESTful API that is used for the front-end connection to control software or HMI. Additionally, the system uses an internal database for configuration of experiments, tags, and data sessions. The eLab also provides a novel integration with DCore blockchain technology so that the users can store the data either in private or public blockchain network. The use of blockchain ensures the preservation, immutability, and verifiability of measured data.
•The NORMAN ARB&ARG enables open and rapid antibiotic resistance (AR) data sharing.•NORMAN ARB&ARG data provides an evidence base for regulators and reveal data gaps.•AR data from three studies were ...successfully imported to the database as a demonstration.
With the global concerns on antibiotic resistance (AR) as a public health issue, it is pivotal to have data exchange platforms for studies on antibiotic resistant bacteria (ARB) and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in the environment. For this purpose, the NORMAN Association is hosting the NORMAN ARB&ARG database, which was developed within the European project ANSWER. The present article provides an overview on the database functionalities, the extraction and the contribution of data to the database. In this study, AR data from three studies from China and Nepal were extracted and imported into the NORMAN ARB&ARG in addition to the existing AR data from 11 studies (mainly European studies) on the database. This feasibility study demonstrates how the scientific community can share their data on AR to generate an international evidence base to inform AR mitigation strategies. The open and FAIR data are of high potential relevance for regulatory applications, including the development of emission limit values / environmental quality standards in relation to AR. The growth in sharing of data and analytical methods will foster collaboration on risk management of AR worldwide, and facilitate the harmonization in the effort for identification and surveillance of critical hotspots of AR. The NORMAN ARB&ARG database is publicly available at: https://www.norman-network.com/nds/bacteria/.
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Background
The NORMAN Association (
https://www.norman-network.com/
) initiated the NORMAN Suspect List Exchange (NORMAN-SLE;
https://www.norman-network.com/nds/SLE/
) in 2015, following the NORMAN ...collaborative trial on non-target screening of environmental water samples by mass spectrometry. Since then, this exchange of information on chemicals that are expected to occur in the environment, along with the accompanying expert knowledge and references, has become a valuable knowledge base for “suspect screening” lists. The NORMAN-SLE now serves as a FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) chemical information resource worldwide.
Results
The NORMAN-SLE contains 99 separate suspect list collections (as of May 2022) from over 70 contributors around the world, totalling over 100,000 unique substances. The substance classes include per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), pharmaceuticals, pesticides, natural toxins, high production volume substances covered under the European REACH regulation (EC: 1272/2008), priority contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) and regulatory lists from NORMAN partners. Several lists focus on transformation products (TPs) and complex features detected in the environment with various levels of provenance and structural information. Each list is available for separate download. The merged, curated collection is also available as the NORMAN Substance Database (NORMAN SusDat). Both the NORMAN-SLE and NORMAN SusDat are integrated within the NORMAN Database System (NDS). The individual NORMAN-SLE lists receive digital object identifiers (DOIs) and traceable versioning via a Zenodo community (
https://zenodo.org/communities/norman-sle
), with a total of > 40,000 unique views, > 50,000 unique downloads and 40 citations (May 2022). NORMAN-SLE content is progressively integrated into large open chemical databases such as PubChem (
https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
) and the US EPA’s CompTox Chemicals Dashboard (
https://comptox.epa.gov/dashboard/
), enabling further access to these lists, along with the additional functionality and calculated properties these resources offer. PubChem has also integrated significant annotation content from the NORMAN-SLE, including a classification browser (
https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/classification/#hid=101
).
Conclusions
The NORMAN-SLE offers a specialized service for hosting suspect screening lists of relevance for the environmental community in an open, FAIR manner that allows integration with other major chemical resources. These efforts foster the exchange of information between scientists and regulators, supporting the paradigm shift to the “one substance, one assessment” approach. New submissions are welcome via the contacts provided on the NORMAN-SLE website (
https://www.norman-network.com/nds/SLE/
).
Abstract This paper deals with the analysis and design of a model predictive control (MPC) strategy used in connection with level control in conically shaped industrial liquid storage tanks. The MPC ...is based on a non-linear dynamic model describing changes of the liquid level concerning changes in the inlet flow of the liquid. Euler discretization of the dynamic system was applied to transform con-tinuous time dynamics to its discrete-time counterpart used in non-linear MPC (NMPC) design. By means of a simulation case study, NMPC has been shown to track the changes of the liquid level, hence provides increased control performance. This paper also compares the traditional approach of optimal control, linear MPC, with the NMPC strategy.
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