Meet Sensmet at M+R 2022
February 23, 2022
Meet Sensmet at Meorga Halle
April 5, 2022
City of Helsinki and Sensmet Renew Snow Meltwater Monitoring Agreement
“Helsinki Downtown, Sunday 8 AM. Last night we had a blizzard – and as we woke up, the city workers had already cleared the roads. The Helsinki City Construction Services, Stara, works hard 24 hours a day until the clean-up job is done. Some 400 snow removal vehicles transport the snow… but to where?”The City of Helsinki pays extra effort to handle snow more conveniently, safely, and sustainably. For this purpose, Stara and four other companies are handling the snow in Helsinki and Stara has 60% of the responsibility. Public concern is that the snow collected from the city streets can contain impurities ranging from debris to polluting contaminants ending in the Baltic Sea.
The Kyläsaari snow melting site is an environmentally friendly snow treatment utility because it is only 10 minutes drive from the city centre, and thus, the driving distances of dump trucks are short. The dump trucks empty their snow loads into a pool of treated municipal wastewater. The cleaned wastewater is still a bit warm, and the heat of the wastewater is employed to melt the snow rapidly. The Kyläsaari utility typically processes 15 000 loads of snow over the winter season.
Helsinki City and Sensmet have renewed their snow meltwater monitoring agreement. Sensmet has committed to monitoring the meltwater quality until 2025. Stara is responsible for every snow melting site, enabling the yearly monitoring activities.
Advanced Wastewater Monitoring 24/7
Sensmet’s automatic µDOES® Multi-metal Water Analyser continuously measures metal concentrations in the Kyläsaari snow melting pool in a 24/7 fashion. The measurement is performed at two stages. First, the incoming treated wastewater is monitored. Secondly, the water analyser measures the water after the snow has been melted and mixed into it and before the mixed pool water is released into the sea. From the difference between those two measurements one can monitor the level of impurities contained in the snow.
A view inside the Sensmet mobile measurement container: µDOES® Multi-metal Water Analyser and fully automated sampling system comprising two intelligent Pre-treatment Units (PTUs)
Real-time analysis of water quality is just one part of the whole solution. Generally speaking, sampling is a crucial part of a reliable online monitoring solution. The importance of representative and robust online sampling cannot be overestimated. At Kyläsaari Sensmet’s full online water quality monitoring solution contains heated sampling lines together with two intelligent Pre-treatment Units. The Pre-treatment units monitor the sample flow conditions in real-time and reduce the solid particle loading by hydrocyclone filtering of the water sample. At Kyläsaari site the µDOES® Water Analyser and sampling system are placed inside Sensmet’s mobile weather-proof container.
