Assuring water quality : improved electronics of the new generation of miniaturised microfluidic chemical analysers

确保良好的水质对我们的河流、湖泊和海洋的健康至关重要，对规范一系列工业过程（包括饮用水供应）也很重要。目前，收集营养物质（如硝酸盐和磷酸盐）和溶解金属（如铁）等重要参数的数据既困难又昂贵。这是因为它依赖于人工收集单个水样，这些水样被送回实验室进行分析。该项目推进了一系列能够自动执行此任务的微型化学分析仪。它们可以被淹没在河流、湖泊或海底，收集有关水的化学成分的高频数据。在许多情况下，数据可以无线发送回用户以获取实时信息。与其他已经商用的传感器相比，这些小型化分析仪提供的数据质量与通过人工采样和实验室分析收集的数据一样好（在某些情况下甚至更好）。分析仪使用微流体和实验室芯片技术，这意味着它们使用实验室中使用的高质量湿化学分析方法的小型化版本，同时消耗非常少的试剂，样品和功率。这使得它们适合长期（几个月到一年）部署。这些分析仪提供的数据可以在很少人为干预的情况下得到更好的信任，并且不会受到困扰许多现有传感器的传感器漂移和干扰的影响。这款微型分析仪是南安普顿国家海洋学中心经过10年的研发，为海洋科学应用而开发的。该项目将允许必要的工程步骤将微型分析仪从研究工具转变为商业产品。一旦商业化，这项技术将在世界范围内用于许多工业和环境应用。这个项目克服了将这项技术从研究工具转变为全球可获得的可行产品的最后障碍。这项技术的真正影响将最终实现，因为它被转化为一系列市场领先的工具，可供全球水质管理人员、监管机构、水务公司和行业使用。在该项目结束时，该技术将被转化为适用于海洋科学和新的更大市场的产品，使其能够以具有成本效益的方式生产，并通过在新市场的一系列示范部署进行验证。

Assuring good water quality is vital for the health of our rivers, lakes and oceans, and is also important in regulating a range of industrial processes (including drinking water supply). At the moment, collecting data about important parameters such as nutrients (e.g. nitrate and phosphate) and dissolved metals (e.g. iron) is difficult and expensive. This is because it relies on the manual collection of individual water samples that are sent back to the laboratory for analysis.This project advances a range of miniature chemical analysers that are able to perform this task automatically. They can be submerged in rivers, in lakes, or at the at the bottom of the ocean, collecting high-frequency data about the chemistry of the water. In many cases the data can be sent wirelessly back to the user for real-time information.Compared to other sensors that are already commercially available, these miniaturised analysers provide data quality that is as good as (or in some cases better than) data collected via manual sampling and laboratory analysis. The analysers use microfluidics and lab-on-chip technology, meaning they use miniaturised versions of the high-quality wet-chemical analysis methods used in the laboratory, meanwhile consuming very low volume of reagents, sample, and power. This makes them suitable for long term (several months to one year) deployment. These analysers provide data that can be better trusted with very little human intervention, and are not subject to the same kind of sensor drift and interferences that plague many existing sensors.The miniature analysers were developed for ocean science applications via 10 years of R&D at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton. This project will allow necessary engineering steps to turn the miniature analysers from research tools into commercial products. Once commercialised, the technology will be available worldwide for many industrial and environmental applications.This project overcomes the final hurdle in turning this technology from a research tool into a globally-accessible viable product. The true impact of this technology will finally be realised, as it is turned into a range of market-leading tools available to water quality mangers, regulators, water companies, and industry worldwideAt the end of this project, the technology will have been turned into a product suitable for both ocean science and new larger markets, adapted so that it can be produced in a cost-effective manner, and validated via a series of demonstration deployments in new markets.