Thursday, March 28, 2024

Smartphone app a divine inspiration

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A new smartphone app developed in South Africa can be used to find water and has potential for environmental use with its ability to tell clean from dirty water. Richard Rennie spoke to a Kiwi farmer who liked the idea so much he invested in it.
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A new mapping technology app is turning smartphones into water diviners and taking much of the black magic out of the art.

The brainchild of South African hydrology and geotech expert Dr Michael du Preez, the app’s mapping technique uses the developing field of electro-seismic technology, capable of generating data sets of geological and hydrological information.

Du Preez’s company, Aquatronic Solutions, has made the technology more accessible to farmers and resource users wanting to survey and discover their own water supplies through developing a smartphone app, ATS Geosuite.

New Zealand manager and company director John McKendry of Gisborne said the firm’s operating history was founded on mineral and oil resource exploration but more recently it began to expand into mapping and discovering water resources in Asia-Pacific and Africa.

“The usual method for mapping is the seismic method, which involves sending an energy source through the soil then measuring the time the signal takes to return, with different rocks and material having different return times. That is how the geology is mapped.

“With electro-seismic measuring we send a seismic signal through the soil but are measuring the electrical signal that returns back through porous rock containing water.

“The seismic signal disrupts the balance of ions in the rock’s minerals, causing a current which travels out and up, to be detected by the equipment.

“A number of survey points are made to fully map the area’s potential for the mineral or water resource being sought, enabling a profile to be drawn by the smartphone-enabled app.”

While the outcome of the surveying activity is impressive in 3D graphics illustrating water, geological and even oil reserves, the activity itself is generated from equipment as simple as a modified post rammer.

“We will drop this about 10 times to generate enough data and then move along to repeat to get a full map of the area below,” McKendry said.

“We are able to see the fluid reserves below, something that cannot be done with traditional seismic mapping.”

The app, developed to discover water down to 250m, could use a seismic source as simple as a heavy sledgehammer repeatedly dropped.

McKendry said the system didn’t suffer the transmission problems experienced by seismic mapping, particularly on pumice and sandy soils so common in areas like Bay of Plenty.

His involvement with the company came from a court battle he had when seeking to extract bottled water from his Gisborne farm 15 years ago.

“I had sought out Michael for another opinion. We got on well and decided to buy into the company.”

While initially discovering aquifers down to 200m, improvements in technology meant reserves as deep as 5000m down were discoverable.

McKendry said the technique was changing some conventional beliefs on where water could be found.

Drillers Federation president Mel Griffiths said he used the data for a drill in Wairarapa, with good results.

“I ended up drilling on a ridgeline, not where you would normally go, and we struck good water at about where the data said it would be.

“Data like this takes the pressure off the driller, knowing you have some accuracy there.”

A recent mapping exercise in India of 48 wells had resulted in a 92% success rate in water discovery.

McKendry said the app made water discovery accessible and affordable, requiring only a couple of jumper leads connected via a plug to the smartphone.

“This is what all the water users in India have done with success. The app is good for discovery of water down to 400m.

“Our consultants tend to be more involved over greater depths or for other underground resources.”

NZ drillers had typically taken a drill-and-pray approach.

“But we are finding we can get over 80% accuracy in country that has some pretty tough geology when it comes to mapping and detecting water sources.”

McKendry said the system was also proving useful for focusing on ground water quality and contamination on leaky soils.

“We have done work in Utah where a farm dairy was leaking effluent into a water supply.

“The mapping technology can detect clean water from dirty water and we could see where the dirty water was encroaching into the aquifer supply.”

The company had done some preliminary work with Hastings District Council in determining contamination sources linked to the Havelock North crisis.

The ability of the data to be processed via a smartphone app made turnaround time on analysis quicker and more accessible in the field once seismic sampling was done.

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