Abstract
Hydrocarbons are one of the most important toxics in the oceans. Their
presence may cause the death of organisms. They even can affect to the human beings,
when they consume products that have been in contact with the hydrocarbons.
After a hydrocarbon spillage, the fishing activity, the tourism, the safety and
the wildlife are endangered. The fast detection is very important in order to start as
soon as possible the cleaning tasks. It can be done using sensor networks. The first
step in order to create a water quality monitoring system is to obtain a good hydrocarbon
sensor. The sensor must be robust and cheap. There is no needed of high
accuracy, the objective is just to detect the presence of the hydrocarbon in the water
surface. In this paper, we present a low cost optic sensor capable of distinguishing
the presence or absence of hydrocarbon in the water surface. The sensor is formed
by light-emitting diode (LED) as a light source and photoreceptor as a receiver. In
order to create the sensor, several tests have been done using different light sources.
The light sources have different wavelength (violet, blue, green, orange, red and
white). In order to test our samples, six samples are prepared. The samples are made
of sea water and fuel (as they are one of the typical hydrocarbons). After the first
tests, the best wavelength is selected and it is studied in detail. The lights selected
were violet, orange and white. After the detailed tests, the light source that offers
best results was the white light.
