This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will develop a prototype online ion monitor for more efficient and cost effective management of water resources in the power industry. The industry currently lacks instrumentation that can both monitor ions below 10 g/L concentrations and be operated in an automated near-real time fashion. Instrumentation that could address this need would allow power plant operators significantly better control of precious ultrapure water resources. This project will create a prototype instrument capable of sub g/L detection of four target anions most interesting to the industry. Advanced MicroLabs, LLC will design, construct, and test an automated prototype device allowing sub g/L detection of target anions free of environmental contamination. Creation of this proof-of-concept prototype would represent a development milestone demonstrating the utility and ultimately allowing on-site testing.
The broader/commercial impacts of this research are water quality monitoring through ion analysis has become approximately a $500 million market globally in the power industry alone. Yet there still exists a market need for instrumentation that can both monitor in an automated, online fashion and with low sensitivity. Indeed, the power industry?s research institute, EPRI, has spent $ Millions in research money over the last 10 years, attempting to address this need with limited success. Advanced MicroLabs, LLC offers an alternative technology. Based on industry feedback, the device created in this project would result in more effective water monitoring, providing total annual water savings of 174 Million gallons and cost savings of $522k at a typical power plant
Advanced MicroLabs has developed an online analyzer that will separate and detect several of the key anionsin the thermoelectric power generation industry, specifically chloride, nitrate, and sulfate Furthermore, we have demonstrated that our proprietary detection technology provides the detection limits andsensitivity needed for these anions at the very low concentrations required by this industry, achieving ≤1 part per billion detection limits. A prototype instrument has been constructed, including an automated fluidics system to provide fully automated operation. We have used our analysis system to analyze several real power plant samples, on-site at 2 different power plants, and have confirmed that the AML instrument will analyze these samples without difficulty. Feedback generated from the field testing of our instrument, from power plant operators and industry experts who have seen our preliminary results, have been that an instrument that provides on-line measurements of just chloride and sulfate would be immediately welcomed by the power industry and would provided much needed data that has previously been unavaliable in an online manner. The figures shown here are of the original CAD design for the prototype instrument and a picture of the final product prototype that has been used in various field testing and is about to go through a second round of field testing and long term unattended testing.
