Real Time Fusion Sensor of Road Salinity Concentration

CARLOS SORIA; ADRIÁN ORELLANA

Córdoba

Congreso; Octavo Congreso Argentino de la Interacción-Persona Computador@, Telecomunicaciones, Informática e Información Científica; 2019

Universidad Nacional de Córdoba

This work describes the development of a novel prototype sensor, made to get in real time the residual salt concentration on the roads. If minimal temperature prediction for the day is below the freezing point of water, the roads with probability of receiving snow must besalted to some value of salt weight per surface unit, according to that minimal temperature, reducing the risk of ice growing. The ideal situation is to get exactly the amount of salt per surface unit in order to avoid excesses of salt because the final destine of the salt are the fields around routes and underground water flows. Then minimal quantities of salt are desired from an environmental point of view. From the point of view of the safety on roads, with just the necessary quantity that avoids ice growing at the minimal temperature of each day is good enough. To achieve that goal, the remaining salt concentration on the road must be measured and for that a real time sensor is desirable. At present there are no such a commercial sensor. As there exist several sources of possible problems with only one sensor, the strategy is to develop a fusion sensor device, based on an optics sensor that detects critical angle between glass and its neighbor media, in this case the salt solution recovered from the road, which also will be measured by a conductivity sensor and a self resonance coil. Besides, the sensors are specially designed to accomplish their tasks in real conditions: low temperatures, dust and contamination present in the salty fluid over the road and delivered by the vehicle wheel to thedeveloped device. In order to preserve the sensors from huge contamination, automatically once every two minutes all the sensors are cleaned with tap water under pressure. To sustain the temperature of operation  under control, a resistance heater system is added on the entry zone of the recovered water and a temperature sensor is located between optics and conductivity sensors, to be able to close the temperature control loop of the fluid.