Latest Proteus News & Announcements

Charleville-Mézières has become the first town in France to measure E. coli in real time in the Meuse, ensuring optimum water quality for its residents.

With the election fast approaching, and all manifestos launched; how do the main UK political parties promise to deliver on water? N.B. Parties were selected as “top four” based on seats held at the dissolution of the most recent parliamentary session.

The treatment of wastewater is essential to maintaining public health. The UK has a natural monopoly of privatised water companies, tasked with the supply and treatment of both wastewater and drinking water. Ofwat, the water regulator, has put a push on innovation being a priority for all water companies in the UK, releasing in 2020 a £200 million fund to 'support innovation initiatives which deliver significant benefits for customers, society and the environment'.

Outdoor swimming is undergoing a renaissance in popularity. Exercise, exposure to chilly waters and nature offer numerous benefits for physical and mental wellbeing. However, water quality may be affected by factors such as agricultural, urban runoff and sewage contamination, posing often unknown risks to bathers.

Many parameters in monitoring water quality can be measured relatively easily using very well-established techniques that range from physio-chemical and optical sensors through to reagent-based analysers. There are few parameters in water quality monitoring that provoke such a wide response of opinion as with ammonia measurement. There are a myriad of suppliers and sensors that offer seemingly unique characteristics and performance advantages

Exciting news from the coasts of Bornholm Island, Denmark! We are thrilled to share the success of a groundbreaking pilot trial conducted by Sensemakers in collaboration with Proteus Instruments. Together, we harnessed cutting-edge technology to revolutionise bathing water quality monitoring for the local authority.

In industrialised nations, water is a prevalent substance which requires little thought on behalf of the consumers as to its origin or its use. The so-called ‘water footprint ’ of common objects and services is often hidden for the average consumer, whether it ’s in the clothes they wear, the products they use or even browsing social media.

RS Hydro and Proteus Instruments have supplied a UK Water Company with the largest real-time catchment monitoring network in the UK with over 250 outstations monitoring water quality, level and weather. Providing 131 multiparameter sondes to date with a significant extension on the horizon. A further 60 dissolved oxygen sondes have also been provided. Sondes vary from a single parameter (Trimeter) through to multiparameter solutions using the EasyProbe30 (turbidity, TSS, DO, pH/ORP, ammonium and temperature), Manta+ and Proteus (all of the previous parameters plus BOD/COD, tryptophan, CDOM and the potential for E.coli).

Proteus instruments innovative real-time chemical oxygen demand (COD) monitoring has revolutionised the rapid assessments of trade effluent for our client, before being introduced to the wastewater treatment process.

Nearly two years have passed since the 2021 Environment Act was brought into law and yet reports of raw sewage spills continue to dominate UK news headlines. Indeed, the Environment Act seems largely responsible for propelling the issue into the wider spotlight with a recent report suggesting that up to 25% of potential bathers have been avoiding sea swimming because of concerns over sewage contamination. However, as the landscape and legislation surrounding the spills continues to evolve, it prompts the question: How does our sewage end up in rivers and seas?

We cannot effectively fight pollution long-term without fully understanding the trends and impacts of the pollutants themselves. There is an increasing sense that we need to update the methods used for assessing water quality health and the way the results are reported to truly understand how pollution is affecting our rivers.

Proteus Instruments is helping clients to monitor pollution events occurring around a shellfish cultivation area to enhance health protection and gather data on the sources of pollution. A Proteus instrument configured with Tryptophan, Turbidity, Temperature, pH, Conductivity and Dissolved Oxygen sensors, and our Total Coliform, E.coli and Faecal coliform calibrations was deployed in the fishery from an existing pontoon.

Two Proteus Instruments fluorescence based coliform monitoring systems have been successfully commissioned in a UV-treatment final effluent application. The addition of this ground-breaking technology, in operation during the summer months pre and post disinfection, is helping to ensure safe public recreation in the receiving watercourse, regulatory compliance and operational cost savings.

Proteus Instruments is proud to announce the new Knowledge Transfer Partnership with the University of Birmingham (UoB) with support from Innovate UK and the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

If you missed our webinar and would like to see it - the webinar is available on demand here:

By harnessing natural wetland processes innovative approaches have greatly increased the contaminant removal efficiencies of ICWs for sustainably treating wastewater. ICWs applied to many different applications, from reducing the concentration BOD and nutrients in sewage and agricultural runoff to cleaning fuel contamination from road drainage systems.

Our webinar GET IN ON THE ACT: Innovative Solutions for the Environment Act 2021 took place on 28th March. You can now view the recording.

All in all, a year on from the tentatively hopeful momentum from the 2021 Environment Act and media attention granted onto the state of England’s rivers and waterways, the landscape remains somewhat lacklustre and bleak (and dare we say dehydrated!).

With increased water scarcity, using water efficiently whilst protecting water resource quality becomes ever more challenging. Water recycling is a necessary step in reducing competing demands for water between communities, industry, and the environment. Ensuring the quality and safety of the water entering re-use is critical. However, the delay between manual sampling and laboratory test results using traditional methods for BOD5 and Coliform counts make compliance, and ultimately safety difficult to ensure.

Worcestershire based Proteus Instruments are one of only 51 organisations nationally to be recognised with a prestigious Queen's Awards for Enterprise: Innovation

Southern Water has launched a real-time water quality testing buoy off Hayling Island. Water quality is an important public issue, with stakeholders calling for Southern Water to take a leading role to ensure the public are informed about water quality in the Solent. This is the second water quality buoy Southern Water has launched this summer, with the other one off Tankerton shore.

Every day, around three million litres of sewage is emptied into the Ganges – and only about half of that has undergone any kind of treatment. The river's waters are so dirty that it's considered one of the most polluted waterways in the world.

A real-time water quality testing buoy has been launched in the sea off Tankerton. The quality of bathing waters is an important public issue and Southern Water is taking a lead as a key custodian, placing this device at the forefront of a wider programme across the south.

In a first for the UK, Proteus Instruments and its partners presented a series of three webinars exploring the current situation and how Proteus aims to provide the 'silver bullet' to monitoring and protecting the rivers & bathing waters from sewage and agricultural pollution.

H2NOW & The Award Winning, Proteus Multiparameter Sensors, are monitoring in the Chicago River in real-time, now back for Summer 2022! H2NOW reports on water quality from 3 locations every 15 minutes

The third webinar in our River Catchment Pollution and Monitoring series took place on 30th June. If you missed it you can watch it here.

It was great to see Rob Stevens, our Managing Director, and the award-winning Proteus on BBC Midlands Today this evening.

Worcestershire based, Proteus Instruments, a trading division of RS Hydro has been honoured with a Queen’s Award for Enterprise: Innovation. The team are extremely proud as this is a huge achievement and the highest accolade for any UK business.

The team at Proteus Instruments are so pleased to have won the Water Dragons 'Highly commended' Award from Future Water!

In one of their first actions of 2022, the Environmental Audit Committee has released what can only be described as a damning report about the state of water quality in UK rivers.

Nearly two years after its introduction to UK parliament, the Environment Act was signed into law on the 9th of November 2021. At over 300 pages long, it is a comprehensive document that covers a wide variety of new legislation for different environmental sectors. The UK Government hopes to use the act as an example for the rest of the world as they set up environmental policy for the next 25 years following Brexit; but what does it actually mean?

Proteus Instruments will be hosting a webinar series covering all aspects of river catchment pollution monitoring.

This great video from New Scientist shows how our Proteus Instruments sensors are being used in the Smarter Water Catchment Programme between Thames Water, Earthwatch and Wild Oxfordshire in the Evenlode catchment.

Thank You Herefordshire & Worcestershire Chamber of Commerce, for this feature.

It's great to know that sensors from Proteus Instruments and wireless RTUs are hard at work in rivers and WWTWs in Northern Ireland providing real-time BOD, COD, coliform and water quality data. If you can measure it you can manage it...

In a landmark achievement, RS Hydro has won the UK's largest framework for the provision of multi-parameter onsite water quality monitoring systems for the monitoring of final effluent waste water. The four-year framework, with the option of two further two-year extensions, is thought to be worth £2 million and is the first of its kind in the UK.

The Chicago River is one of the world's greatest metropolitan rivers, forming the aquatic backbone of the city itself at 251km long. The river is key to city life providing transport, recreation, commerce, biodiversity among a unique and proud architectural setting. As such, monitoring the quality of the water has never been more important for its service users.

We are proud to announce the latest scientific research piece featuring Proteus was published in May 2021; 'Calibration of an in-situ fluorescence-based sensor platform for reliable BOD5 measurement in wastewater'.

Our MD Rob Stevens is always keen to get out into the field and get stuck into real-life research, earlier this year he went on his own pollution detective mission and throughout September-October has been on multiple adventures. The River Wye and the River Thames have been the focus, the latter supported by The Rivers Trust, a prominent UK NGO organisation whose main aim is to protect and improve the UK's rivers.

Climate change is a phrase often bandied around almost recklessly in political arenas; an effort in grabbing attention then followed by a mediocre policy akin to sticking a plaster over a gaping wound. However, in Glasgow this November, the United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties was held with the aim to accelerate movement toward achieving the goals set by the Paris Agreement (2015) and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (1994).

Proteus - technology invented in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire is helping with the fight against water pollution across the world. Nicola Goodwin, BBC Journalist interviewed MD Rob Stevens and some of the team at Proteus to learn more about how the technology is accurately and reliably measuring BOD, COD, TOC and Coliforms in permanent and temporary applications around the world.

Proteus is behind the H2NOWChicago project and is measuring in real time the Chicago River water quality. Going underwater to show you in this Vlog with Svetlana Taylor, Technical Program Director at Current, Robert Stevens Managing Director at Proteus Instruments and Guy Meiri, VP of Sales and Business Development at IOSight.

On Thursday 14 October, six companies took part in a virtual heat of the Future Water innovation competition, Water Dragons. The competition was held during the annual WWEM conference and provided a fantastic opportunity for entrants to pitch their innovative products, services and processes to a panel of water sector specialists, in addition to being streamed live as part of the WWEM conference programme.

The Institute of Water have announced Proteus Instruments as the Midlands area Innovation awards winners for 2021!

Our latest hardcase for the Proteus is now available for sale ex-stock and as standard for our global rental fleets.

Proteus Instruments is excited to announce the appointment of a new member of staff- Hannah Gunter!

RS Hydro are pleased to announce the official launch of their new multi-parameter fluorometer range - Proteus instruments.

The Proteus BOD, RS Hydro's ground breaking real-time BOD sensor, has reached the final of the Isle sponsored innovate competition.

RS Hydro and the University of Birmingham (Water Sciences Group) are excited to announce that their Knowledge Transfer Partnership proposal has been successful and will be commencing soon.