Early Detection of Biocontamination by Fast GC/IMS

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Biocides are used to control harmful and unwanted organisms and microorganisms and are used in many manufacturing processes to reduce the risk of bio-contamination in products. This can have a negative effect on the environment and so in the future here will be less and less biocides used. Although good news for the environment, manufacturers are finding it difficult to know when they have bio-contamination in their products. Bio-contamination in manufacturing processes, can ruin product ready for sale, costing manufactures millions of pounds in spoilt product or recalls.This project will develop a new analytical system for detecting and warning of unwanted biocontamination in water-based industrial systems. This project will be carried out using technology called GC-IMS to look at the key fingerprint biomarkers identified in the first stages of the project as potential early warning signals for industrial biocontamination events. Different type of mixtures will be tested to evaluate a wider range of industrially relevant samples.IMSPEX Diagnostics Ltd will further develop their GC-IMS device, which has already been successfully deployed in industrial settings. The developments are needed to make the GC-IMS sampling even more sensitive. This will advance the current instrumental detection limits by a factor of 1000\. IMSPEX will have help from leading IMS application development scientists from the University of South Wales. Creating a cost-effective, robust and easy-to-deploy biocontamination testing system to deliver a more robust alarm for biocontamination in under 30 minutes will be of great benefit, when compared to what is currently available of which can only yield results in days rather than minutes.After the project IMSPEX aims to bring to market a tool that can assist in not only significantly lowering the risk of catastrophic biocontamination events occurring in manufacturing environments but also lower the overall use of biocides, increasing sustainability of water-based manufacturing processes. There is an opportunity for IMSPEX Diagnostics to be first to market with such as system.