Manned and unmanned effluent lagoon surveys with the CEESCOPE™ and CEE-USV™

About EBS

Environmental Business Specialists (EBS), of Mandeville, Louisiana, is an independent wastewater treatment consulting and training company. It solves operational and training challenges in the wastewater industry. EBS scientists advise clients on protecting rivers, lakes, streams and estuaries while supporting their financial goals and long-term sustainability.

EBS provides specialised on-site support to industrial wastewater treatment systems, including on-going monitoring and sampling. Survey-grade effluent lagoon mapping is now part of its consultancy and support services for the industrial and municipal wastewater treatment industry.

The challenge

In 2016, EBS decided to develop a professional-grade hydrographic survey capability to help clients understand sludge accumulation in their lagoons. Competing offerings were often based on non-survey-grade recreational depth finders, or laborious and costly manual sludge surveys.

“In industrial wastewater treatment systems, knowing the current water volume available for treatment is crucial as it directly relates to the time available for treatment. From the first day industrial systems are put into operation, basins are decreasing in volume. Routine hydrographic surveys show changes in volume that can be tracked, and results used to inform capital spending projects such as dredging. These surveys not only inform when dredging might be needed but where in the basin dredging is needed most.”

Heather Edmunds, Staff Scientist, EBS

The solution: CEESCOPE™ on a manned boat

After field-testing several echo sounders, EBS selected the dual frequency CEE HydroSystems CEESCOPE™ for its industry-leading ease of use. With a GNSS receiver and echo sounder in a single portable unit, the CEESCOPE™ simplifies operation without compromising data quality. To keep its data credible and trustworthy, EBS chose HYPACK® acquisition software.

With the CEESCOPE™ installed on a manned boat with an “over the side” pole mount, EBS started its new survey service quickly, initially with field training from CEE staff.

Adding the CEE-USV™ unmanned survey boat

As the program succeeded, demand for surveys grew. Looking for ways to put safety first, EBS reviewed adding an unmanned survey boat. After testing the CEE HydroSystems CEE-USV™, EBS bought the system in 2019, including the telemetry-enabled CEESCOPE LITE™ dual frequency echo sounder.

The first survey with the USV ran the manned CEESCOPE™ boat and the CEE-USV™ at the same time to validate the results. Because both boats use CEESCOPE™ echo sounders, the data are consistent and the software drivers and setup are identical. Surveyors can use the USV with little or no extra training, and switch between manned and unmanned surveys easily, with no change to data acquisition in HYPACK®.

Why an unmanned boat works for lagoons

• Live data on shore. The shore operator sees real-time HYPACK® survey data on the field PC and steers the boat precisely along pre-planned survey lines for consistent, complete coverage.
• Safer access. At a fraction of the size of a standard boat, the USV can be placed into elevated or lowered structures, so nobody has to go in. Water bodies that are hazardous or not designed for personnel entry can be surveyed safely, such as liquor ponds, surge and stormwater ponds, municipal lagoons and hazardous waste ponds.
• Smaller crew. The survey crew drops from three to two, with safety on site maintained.
• Better coverage. The USV manoeuvres better than a manned boat, especially in small lagoons, so coverage is typically better and features in sludge deposition are identified more consistently.

The results

EBS has already used the CEE-USV™ in a wide range of sites:

• 230 acre pond. A manned boat could have worked, but the client preferred not to have people on the water.
• 0.7 acre fenced pond. The pond was completely surrounded by a fence that limited boat access, and too small to manoeuvre a traditional boat.
• Chemical refinery. Multiple ponds, the largest only 3 acres. Launching, recovering and relaunching a boat in every pond would have taken too long. With the CEE-USV™, EBS greatly reduced the project cost by minimising mobilisation time between ponds.
• Paper mill. More than 50 diffused air laterals, one every 30 ft. The client did not want people on the water, and steering a boat between the laterals would have been difficult: an ideal job for a USV.

Manual navigation in wastewater lagoons

EBS’s CEE-USV™ can run with the CEE-PILOT™ robotic autopilot. In wastewater lagoons, though, obstructions and unknown obstacles make waypoint navigation risky: a pre-programmed route could send the boat across cables and into equipment. Manual navigation is the common-sense approach for these surveys, especially as most lagoons are relatively small.

Summary

Both the CEESCOPE™ and the CEE-USV™ are designed to cut field equipment complexity to an absolute minimum. EBS has proven both in challenging industrial environments, and can now offer clients surveys with real safety and cost benefits while keeping professional-grade data.