USV Assist In Pollution Remediation to The World’s Third Longest River

A provincial government in China innovatively adopts unmanned surface vessel to assist in a large scale pollution remediation of the country’s mother river, which is also the third longest river in the world, the Yangtze River.

The mission is a pilot move of a special action launched by a government department to investigate and remedy illegal sewage outlets polluting the Yangtze River.

The national news station reports how USVs assist in pollution remediation

A 1.6-meter-long OceanAlpha TC40 USV carrying a side scan sonar was applied in detecting underwater sewage pipelines which are outpouring industrial waste into the river illegally. A real-time acoustic image was presented on the base station monitor for immediate pipeline identification. It only took the surveyors 20 minutes to identify 4 suspected pipelines from the image while the position & orientation equipment provides exact coordinates for further inspection and law enforcement to clear all the illegal outlets.

Suspected pipeline on the acoustic image

A SL20 USV deploying an ADCP surveyed the primary tributary and secondary tributary in the estuary area to obtain current velocity and discharge data.

Manually tracking and revealing pollution sources is one of the most arduous part of pollution remediation which is often conducted with low efficiency, high cost and would post huge potential safety hazard to surveyors. The application of unmanned surface vessel technology can substitute human being for working in complex or severely polluted water environment and guarantee the high quality of survey data and success of mission with its great functional stability and matured technology.

The application of OceanAlpha’s pipeline detection USV has brought about technological revolutionary to the traditional operation of sewage outlet remediation, which particularly suits the need of city management in environmental monitoring and pollution investigation.