WC148 MayJune 2026 - Magazine - Page 34
INNOVATION
In order to determine if the H2S was damaging the channel
or ventilation needed to be improved, a user-controlled drone
was deemed the best solution to measure H2S without having to
open the channel and risk losing cameras.
After initial tests on a local storm pond where it proved it
could skim, pivot and keep upright the drone was deployed in a
sealed channel.
Human exposure to H2S is deemed dangerous to humans at
10 parts per million (PPM) and while the channel showed readings at 35 ppm it wasn’t a safety concern as the air in the channel
stays contained underground.
The team also discovered a thick buildup of grease and organic
matter on the channel floor and walls which could be flushed and
would not have been detected without the use of the drone boat.
Allen used off-the shelf parts and the plant’s own 3D printer
to create the remote-controlled boat as he determined a storebought solution wasn’t suitable for the task.
“If you have a remote-controlled boat that’s great, maybe you
can drive it up the channel but how are you going to get radio
signals to travel through nine inches of steel reinforced concrete?
You want to transmit video and get telemetry back from the unit.
An RC boat is just a toy with a one-way communications link
that’s quite limited,” he said.
“The big part of this was coming up with a communications
architecture that could carry different kinds of data and penetrate
through that concrete and be a platform that we could expand
into other projects down the road,” Allen said.
“At a wastewater treatment plant there’s lots of unique situations
and every plant is a little bit different. We have the staff like Lee and
others to deliver solutions for us so that rather than struggling we
can actually take steps to fix them,” Campbell added.
“We quickly figured out this is just the tip of the iceberg. If we
build something with the ability to navigate, we can use it for
all sorts of things like other channels at the plant and eventually confined-space inspections…once the tool was made, the
options were sort of endless on how to use it,” he said.
“It’s all homebrewed, 3D printed, we’ve designed everything
ourselves, so we don’t have to use it as-is. This is an airboat
with dual jet drives, but maybe the next version will have
wheels. In the freshwater side you could build something submersible where you do underwater inspections in a clearwater
tank,” Allen said. “This is a launching pad to other things.”
Technology has caught up to the point where processes
that would have been impractical a decade ago or impossible
twenty years ago are now feasible in terms of both cost and
time efficiency, he added, with parts ordered off Amazon and
an overall budget of approximately $1,000.
“It was a backburner side project where we thought we’ll
take a bit of a flyer and if it works out, great and if it doesn’t,
we’re not risking a lot,” Allen said.
“It was quite economical,” Campbell said. “The way I look at it is
even if we’d brought in some sort of floating camera, it might have
cost us $1,000, it might not have done the job we wanted it to do and
now we can use it again and again and we’ve learnt a lot.”
Allen’s experience with the drone boat led him to create 3D
printed fobs for plant personnel in order to make their work
easier while providing added security for the plant.
“On a macro level, given the availability of electronics and
improvements with them and the information available we can do
a lot of stuff that you just couldn’t do before,” Campbell said.
“The City of Lethbridge and others rely on stable systems, and
customization is sometimes frowned upon but in bite-sized pieces
it’s totally doable now and something we should be looking at
consistently to solve problems we just lived with before.”
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WATER C AN ADA • M AY/JUNE 2026
WAT E R C A N A D A . N E T
