Document Type

Article

Department/Program

Virginia Institute of Marine Science

Publication Date

2017

Journal

Water

Volume

9

Issue

12

Abstract

Laboratory experiments were conducted to compare the performances of four different instruments for measuring suspended cohesive sediment concentrations (SSCs). Among these instruments, two were different models of optical backscatter sensor (i.e., OBS3+ and OBS5+), one was an acoustic Doppler velocimeter (MicroADV), and the last was a laser infrared optical sensor developed at Hohai University, China (HHU-LIOS). Sediments collected from the Yangtze River Estuary and a commercially available kaolinite were selected to check the responses of these four instruments. They were placed in an aqueous solution, and the SSCs were changed within a range from about 10 mg/L to 30 g/L to demonstrate the effective measuring ranges for each instrument. For the kaolinite suspension, the results showed that the HHU-LIOS has a much larger linear response range (0.1 to 13 g/L) when compared with other devices (the MicroADV: 0.1 to 1.35 g/L; the OBS3+: 0.1 to 5 g/L; and the OBS5+: 0.1 to 1 g/L). For the sediment sample from the Yangtze River Estuary, the results showed that the HHU-LIOS has a much wider usable range (from 0.1 to 25 g/L), compared with those for the others. It also showed that a combination of using a HHU-LIOS for the quadratic increasing range up to 25 g/L and the OBS5+ for the clear decreasing output are able to measure the SSCs of the estuarine mud up to 50 g/L.

DOI

10.3390/w9120968

Keywords

Changjiang Estuary; Optical Backscatter; Settling Velocity; Floc Size; Sensor; Transport; River

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