Early Detection of Biocontamination by Fast GC/IMS

杀生物剂用于控制有害和不需要的生物体和微生物，并用于许多制造过程中，以降低产品中生物污染的风险。这可能对环境产生负面影响，因此未来将越来越少地使用杀虫剂。虽然这对环境是个好消息，但制造商发现很难知道他们的产品中何时有生物污染。制造过程中的生物污染会破坏准备销售的产品，造成数百万英镑的产品损坏或召回。该项目将开发一种新的分析系统，用于检测和警告水基工业系统中不必要的生物污染。该项目将使用称为GC-IMS的技术进行，以研究项目第一阶段确定的关键指纹生物标志物，作为工业生物污染事件的潜在预警信号。将对不同类型的混合物进行测试，以评估更广泛的工业相关样品。IMdac Diagnostics Ltd将进一步开发其GC-IMS设备，该设备已成功应用于工业环境。为了使GC-IMS采样更加灵敏，需要进行开发。这将使目前的仪器检测限提高1000倍。IMdac将得到来自南威尔士大学的领先IMS应用开发科学家的帮助。创建一个具有成本效益的，强大的和易于部署的生物污染测试系统，在30分钟内提供更强大的生物污染警报将是非常有益的，与目前可用的工具相比，这些工具只能在几天而不是几分钟内产生结果。项目结束后，IMdac旨在向市场推出一种工具，不仅可以帮助显着降低灾难性生物污染事件的风险，这不仅会在制造环境中发生，而且会降低杀生物剂的总体使用量，提高水基制造工艺的可持续性。IMdac Diagnostics有机会率先将此类系统推向市场。

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.