According to the Ministry of Ecology and Environment’s “Site Investigation Data Quality Assessment Report” (2024), 45% of pollution migration prediction errors come from inaccurate flow velocity data. Traditional measurement methods in low-permeability aquifers (hydraulic conductivity <10⁻⁶ m/s) have data loss rates as high as 60%, becoming a “fatal blind spot” in pollution control decision-making.
Three months ago, I received a request for help from General Manager Yu of an environmental testing company. They encountered a big problem in a contaminated site remediation project in North China. The entire project was stuck. If it could not be handled properly, the loss would be nearly more than 1 million.
What big problem did General Manager Yu encounter? For contaminated site remediation, field data must first be collected, then a plan is made based on the data, and finally implementation is carried out.
As a result, during the first round of remediation acceptance, experts found that the remediation result deviated from the actual situation by 50%, and the acceptance failed.
Why was the remediation result so different? It turned out that when General Manager Yu’s team conducted groundwater flow velocity and direction monitoring, they used the traditional tracer method instead of the colloidal pipeline microscope principle. At that time, the measured groundwater flow velocity was 0.25 m/d, so the plan was made and implemented based on this data.
However, during acceptance, the experts used an imported groundwater flow velocity and direction instrument based on the colloidal pipeline microscope principle, and found that the actual groundwater flow velocity was 0.5 m/d. The pollution migration range differed by a full 500 meters, and the groundwater flow direction was also questionable.
This data made General Manager Yu extremely distressed, because when collecting groundwater flow velocity and direction data, they had repeatedly conducted monitoring three times and believed it was already very reliable, but they did not expect such a big discrepancy.
So what to do? The client required General Manager Yu to carry out project rectification, and the contract stipulated that if the project still could not pass acceptance after three rectifications, the project would be voided, and General Manager Yu would face a loss of more than 1 million.
So General Manager Yu found us through an introduction.
The AML920 groundwater flow velocity and direction instrument from AIMOLI adopts the colloidal pipeline microscope principle. As early as 2018, it was listed by the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment as a necessary instrument for judicial identification of soil and groundwater environmental damage.Groundwater Monitoring Equipment
Traditional groundwater flow velocity and direction detection equipment usually adopts the thermal pulse method and ordinary particle tracer method. The thermal pulse method is greatly affected by water pressure, and when detecting flow velocity and direction within 100 meters of water depth, its disadvantage is inaccurate measurement.
The ordinary particle tracer method can only measure water bodies that are not too clear or not too turbid, and for traditional groundwater flow velocity and direction measurement, global peers are still stuck at two-dimensional plane data.
Our AIMOLI AML920 groundwater flow velocity and direction adopts the colloidal pipeline microscope principle, does not require multi-well coordination or tracer injection, and has minimal disturbance to the aquifer. Single-well measurement time is ≤30 minutes, reducing detection time by 4–5 hours compared with traditional non-colloidal-pipeline-microscope groundwater flow velocity and direction equipment.
In addition, with the help of a digital-intelligent platform, the AML920 groundwater flow velocity and direction instrument based on the colloidal pipeline microscope principle has a built-in microprocessor to calculate flow velocity vectors in real time, generating flow direction rose diagrams, flow velocity profiles, and 3D flow field simulation diagrams. It supports GPRS, WIFI, USB, and wired network uploads, avoiding manual recording and secondary processing errors—solving the industry pain point of “data that cannot be used after measurement,” making data “usable immediately after measurement.”
Finally, General Manager Yu decided to use our AIMOLI AML920 groundwater flow velocity and direction instrument for monitoring.
Last week, General Manager Yu sent me a thank-you message, saying that the project has passed acceptance and AIMOLI helped recover a loss of more than 1 million for the project.
AIMOLI environmental instruments, precise enough to make peers anxious!
