Dissolved Oxygen Sensor Testing in Aquaculture with Osmo Systems

The demand for sustainable seafood has never been greater, yet the aquaculture industry still faces significant challenges in optimizing water quality monitoring. Traditional sensor solutions remain expensive, complex, and difficult to deploy at scale. Osmo Systems, through their innovative Osmobot, is striving to improve aquaculture by providing a cost‑effective, user‑friendly, and continuous water quality monitoring system.

However, achieving accurate dissolved oxygen measurements—a crucial factor in aquatic farming—required a breakthrough in calibration techniques, for dissolved oxygen sensor testing. The expertise of Alicat’s FusionFlow™ team came into play. FusionFlow engineers enabled a high‑precision, multi‑point calibration process by designing a custom gas mixing system tailored to Osmobot’s unique needs. This collaboration streamlined Osmobot’s research and development, bringing them closer to sustainable and scalable aquaculture solutions.

The FusionFlow team played a pivotal role in helping Osmo Systems refine their Osmobot oxygen sensor, setting the stage for a new monitoring standard in the aquaculture industry.

Seafood is the only source of animal protein that human beings still hunt at large scale. Existing quality monitoring solutions in aquaculture do not provide sufficient data to help farmers produce high quality yields. Water quality sensors in use are discrete samplers, require skilled labor to operate, and are expensive. Osmobot’s first goal is to develop a cost effective quality monitoring solution which is easy to manage and provides continuous data.

“The rate of regeneration of naturally occurring seafood is unable to keep up with the rising demand and threatens the health of oceans all over. Aquaculture is the answer to protect aquatic life in oceans worldwide. Unfortunately, the Aquaculture industry is not mature enough and lacks the right set of tools to take over the mammoth task of creating a sustainable source of seafood. Osmobot’s mission is to develop the right tools that enable Aquaculture to become sustainable and as efficient as possible.”

 

— Zach Stein, CEO – Osmo Systems

In Aquaculture, farmers need cost effective sensors to place them at multiple locations for real time continuous monitoring. Sensors available in the market today come at high costs due to high quality precision demanded in other industries. Osmobot’s immediate goal is to develop a cost effective Dissolved Oxygen sensor that can be embedded into their multi‑parameter sensor system.

The current standards used to calibrate oxygen sensor are not good enough for what Osmobot needs.

“Most sensors today use a 2‑point—or less than 5‑point—technique to calibrate their sensors from standard models. We want to generate our own models by having the freedom to research with multi‑point calibrations easily.”

 

— Jacob Goldberg – Osmo Systems

Osmobot’s engineers quickly realized that using premixed gas cylinders would be prohibitively expensive. They decided to purchase a dynamic gas mixing system which would provide flexibility and control over gas mixtures.

Osmobot expended a lot of time and energy searching for gas mixer suppliers who could design the right system for them. Osmobot’s R&D scientist says, “All suppliers had good gas mixing solutions, but they were expensive, slow to respond and quoted very long leads times”. Osmobot had a distinct and specific set of requirements:

1. A modular Gas Mixing system
2. Easy to use software, with the ability to:
   • Have Gas Mix presets
   • Schedule interpolation between multiple gas mix presets
   • Log all data parameters
3. A cost‑effective system that has only the components they need
4. High accuracy and fast mass flow controllers, at least an order of magnitude more accurate than their sensor’s specification
5. Engineering assistance to design the system and provide support during and after implementation

Osmobot found that all their needs were met with the FusionFlow team’s initial proposal. They designed a system within 2 business days given their strong grasp of core technology. Short leads times and the cost‑effective solution gave Osmobot the confidence to confirm their gas mixing supplier within a day of sending the quote.

“Joe Ancona (FusionFlow’s Managing Director) has been really transparent and helpful from the beginning. His knowledge of gas mixing systems and informative inputs gave us the confidence that it would be good to work with the FusionFlow team.”

 

— Jacob Goldberg – Osmo Systems

“The value FusionFlow has provided is immeasurable. The FusionFlow system has allowed our software team to completely automate our calibration process, meaning what used to be a full day of constant work can now be accomplished with the click of a button.”

 

— Zach Stein, CEO – Osmo Systems

In oxygen sensor testing, precise control over oxygen levels in water and the ability to test varying dissolved oxygen (DO) concentrations are crucial. With advancements from FusionFlow mixers, they have accelerated their R&D goals. Osmobot has been able to develop their own physical models by performing 100‑point and 1000‑point calibration to characterize the entire system; over and beyond standard low resolution techniques.

After they have completed the development of their sensor, Osmobot look forward to upgrading their current Gas Mixing system to expand its capabilities and add more FusionFlow systems to start mass production of their sensors.

For many kinds of gas analysis sensor development, having a dynamic and flexible method of mixing gases is ideal for both identifying the range of the sensor’s sensitivity, but also for permitting a high resolution, many‑point of characterization calibration process. FusionFlow MXM’s sensitivity, dynamism, and precision make that possible.