Imperial has started using new drone technology to collect river water samples for safe, precise and accurate spill response and environmental monitoring.
Sarnia News Today learned more about it from Aaron Huggett, the Digital Lead at the Sarnia site.
"It's really interesting technology," he said. "It leverages some water sampling payload technology that was developed in Europe for testing lake water. So, it gives us the ability to select the depth that we want to take a water sample, whether from the surface or at depth at a variety of locations on the river... so that we're able to get very accurate samples fast and with reduced risk."
Huggett said employees can stay on shore now, whereas before they would board boats to collect the samples.
"In some weather conditions that would be less desirable. Also, in the event of a spill response, it reduces the risk by not having a boat and a motor in the water as well," he said.
Huggett said they've only had the drone for a few weeks and just completed the training to use it.
"In addition to the Transport Canada Advanced Drone Pilot certification, which requires an exam and a flight review (that's somewhat similar to a car driving test), we also leveraged third party training for the proprietary water sampling technology," Huggett said.
While this drone will mostly be used for rapid spill response, it will also be flown for other tasks including quarterly training.
"For the water sampling it's just a single drone. But, we do have other drones for inspection, emergency response, and other uses," Huggett said.
He said to his knowledge, Imperial's Sarnia site is the first industry in this region using the technology for water sampling operations.
