Fiber optic sensors for harsh environments: environmental, hydrogeological, and chemical sensing applications

This paper is focused on different use cases of fiber optic sensor deployments in harsh environments for environmental, hydrogeological, and chemical sensing applications. One of the applications is distributed monitoring of soil and groundwater during in-situ thermal remediation of brownfields. The unique advantages of fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors are demonstrated through the development of transducers for distributed sensing of soil temperature and level of groundwater which are critical performance parameters for assessing the efficiency of environmental remediation projects. In addition, research studies are presented in this paper on the development of fiber optic pH sensors for soil and subsurface monitoring applications using a stimuli responsive polymer coated on fiber Bragg gratings.