Researchers publish paper on fluorometer performance for real-time monitoring

UNSW researchers, Florence Choo, Arash Zamyadi, Kelly Newton, Gayle Newcombe, Lee Bowling, Richard Stuetz and Rita K. Henderson have recently published a paper in the International Water Association's H2O Journal on a Performance evaluation of in situ fluorometers for real-time cyanobacterial monitoring.

In this study, the authors systematically evaluated the performance of in situ fluorometers as a real time cyanobacterial detection tool in the presence of two major interference sources.

While the authors explored previous publications which look at fluorometer application as a potential cyanobacterial monitoring tool, they noted that such studies were limited by the fluorometers and species tested.

In contrast, the authors used a total of six fluorometers and four cyanobacterial species in the study. The authors found good correlations between all the fluorometers and all the species tested, developed limits of detection for the fluorometers and species,  and found mutliplier factors for direct comparison of fluorometers.

The authors found that the addition of green algae caused fluorometer performance to decrease either via over estimation or underestimation where fluorometer inaccuracy depended on  cyanobacteria concentration and interference source. However, this study shows that despite problems with fluorometers, the extent of the impact from interference sources can be chatacterised and potentially corrected to enable successful cyanobacteria dectection in the field.