SBIR Phase II: e-CHEM: A fully-autonomous connected in-situ chemical sensor

这个小型企业创新研究项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力将涉及公共卫生，拟议的“e-CHEM”解决方案能够以高时间分辨率监测化学水质，并在水质下降时提供早期警报。世界卫生组织已认识到水化学品安全风险管理对确保公众健康至关重要。通过尽早向供水公司和最终用户通报饮用水质量或分配基础设施中的问题，可以大大减少自来水质量差的持续时间。对于工业部门，e-CHEM将测量废水污染，使其得到有效的处理和再利用，并限制淡水的使用，特别是在受干旱影响的地区。e-CHEM将对多个行业产生重大的商业影响，降低成本，减少责任，改善健康。SBIR第二阶段项目建议将第一阶段开发和试点测试的e-CHEM分析仪商业化，以提供完整的数据分析解决方案，用于在缺乏基础设施的关键应用中自主进行水质监测。（电力、通信）、位置偏远或有限的人力资源目前施加了严重的限制。e-CHEM使用新型的基于试剂和无试剂的芯片实验室传感器技术，在高度小型化的仪器中连续定量多种水污染物，其准确性和灵敏度接近甚至超过当前的实验室能力。该项目的第二阶段将涉及基础研究和应用研究的结合，旨在改进e-CHEM原型，以适应现场作业期间的环境变化，优化和加固系统以供用户操作，并开发用于数据分析的机器学习算法。e-CHEM饮用水技术经过全面验证后，e-CHEM系统也将适用于恶劣环境，例如非常规油气作业的工业废水监测。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project will be on public health, with the proposed "e-CHEM" solution enabling the monitoring of chemical water quality with high temporal resolution, providing early alerts when quality degrades. The World Health Organization has recognized water chemical safety risk management as essential for ensuring public health. By informing water utilities and end-users early on about problems in the drinking water quality or in the distribution infrastructure, the duration of poor tap water quality episodes can be drastically reduced. For the industrial sector, e-CHEM will measure wastewater contamination, allowing its effective treatment and reuse and limiting fresh source water use particularly in regions affected by drought. e-CHEM will have major commercial impact across multiple industries, minimizing costs, reducing liabilities, and improving health.This SBIR Phase II project proposes to commercialize the e-CHEM analyzer developed and pilot-tested in Phase I to provide a complete data analytics solution for performing water quality monitoring autonomously in critical applications where lack of infrastructure (power, communications), location remoteness, or limited human resources currently impose severe constraints. e-CHEM uses novel reagent-based and reagent-less lab-on-chip sensor technology to continuously quantify multiple water contaminants within a highly-miniaturized instrument, with accuracy and sensitivity levels approaching and even surpassing current laboratory capabilities. This Phase II project will involve a combination of fundamental and applied research aimed at improving the e-CHEM prototype for environmental variations during field operations, optimizing and ruggedizing the system for user operations, and developing machine learning algorithms for data analytics. After full validation of e-CHEM technology for drinking water, the e-CHEM system will also be adapted for harsh environments, such as monitoring of industrial wastewater from unconventional oil-and-gas operations.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.