Biofouling Protection for Marine Environmental Sensors

Biofouling is a process in which microorganisms grow and proliferate on the surface. Biofouling is a problem made by biofilm. This kind of fouling occurs in a wide range of industrial process and causes problems for the high-priced process, in particular. In different industries, it has been worked out to deal with this issue, separately. In all of them, the main problem is the biofilm formation. These days, many marine autonomous environment monitoring networks are set up in the world. Owing to the intense technological development of in situ autonomous monitoring systems, the biofouling problem for such systems has been a technological one which needed to be solved. Consequently, such systems without efficient biofouling protection are hopeless. Localized electro-chlorination biofouling protection is actually a promising and an advanced solution for in situ oceanographic sensors since many successful in situ results have been obtained and sensor manufacturers can integrate into their instruments a compact, simple, robust and low energy requiring a solution. This protection must be applied to the sensors and to the underwater communication equipment based on acoustic technologies. This paper presents the results obtained in the laboratory and at sea, with various instruments, protected by a localized chlorine generation system.