The broader impact/commercial potential of this project centers on the ability to measure concentrations of toxic metals in water using a simple, power-free technology. Metals represent an important class of water contaminants that come from a variety of sources including mining, transportation, manufacturing, waste management, and energy production. The U.S. EPA has developed water-quality regulations that require periodic monitoring for specific metals, such as: nickel, chromium, iron, and zinc (and many more). These regulations have largely driven the development of the environmental water-quality market sector, within which we will initially target mining, energy production, and waste management segments. At present, however, the cost of monitoring toxic metals is high (hundreds of dollars per sample) given the large numbers of samples that must be analyzed across the life cycle of many of these sites. Our technology is simple and inexpensive and thus will allow for more frequent monitoring to better protect critical water supplies from contamination. The long-term impact from this technology is a significant cost reduction needed to protect and monitor our nation?s water resources.
This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will develop a novel, sensitive technology for metals in water. This technology, called the Chemometer, is inexpensive and portable and requires no power and no external reading equipment. Quantifying metals in water is presently done using large, expensive laboratory equipment with costs of >$100/sample. Current portable measurement systems (most notably X-Ray Fluorescence) are not well suited to aqueous samples. Thus, a need (and a viable market) exists for simple, portable, power-free measurement tools that enable rapid in-field quantification of metals in water. Our approach will be substantially less expensive and simple to use. The Chemometer is made on ordinary filter paper using innovative barrier printing technology. Reagents are selectively patterned on the paper to give selective and sensitive measurements of metals in water. Quantifying metal concentrations is done by simply measuring the length of a colored region on the Chemometer once the assay is complete. The Chemometer is portable (and disposable), making streamside measurements feasible in all sorts of resource-poor locations.
." The work aimed to advance a technology capable of easily measuring metal concentrations in water at concentrations relevant for environmental and human health applications. The project focused initially on four dissolved metals (Iron, Copper, Nickel and Zinc). These metals are relevant to many industries throughout the world and must be managed to avoid negative environmental and ecosystem impact. Research was carried out to determine the best chemistry to yield a colorimetric response to the presence of metals so that an end user could read the concentration of metals in water by eye. This technology prevents the need for elaborate instrumentation to determine metals content in water. The four metals investigated all could be determined at single milligram per liter concentration levels which is considered a large success. As part of the project a method and device were developed to capture and concentrate metal solutions so that the limits of detection could be improved. It was determined that very large concentration enhancements can be achieved enabling over 100X improvements in the detection limits. This allows the technology now to detect metals at levels of tens of micrograms per liter. These low concentration detection limits broaden the applicability of this simple detection platform to cover many different uses. The project demonstrates the intellectual merit of advancing practical chemistry combined with low-cost manufacturing approaches for an application that has the potential to serve many millions of people around the world. The broader impact of advancing the Chemometer technology is that Access Sensor has increased the knowledge of using paper-based microfluidics for metals analysis. This has the potential to eliminate cost and waste in chemical analyses. In addition the simplicity may allow this technology to empower new segments of the population that have concerns over their environmental exposure to pollutants but who do not have the training to carry out analysis testing.
