Microelectrochemical Capillary System for Environmental Analytical Lab on a Chip

"As part of its mission to protect human health and the environment, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is dedicated to developing and promoting innovative cleanup strategies that restore contaminated sites to productive use, reduce associated costs, and promote environmental stewardship. However, in adopting this strategy there will be an increasing need to implement a more cost effective, long term monitoring strategy for all remediation sites, as well as for the surrounding areas, that cannot be adequately address by the current state of the art monitoring technologies. To address the problem we propose to develop a new, automated field deployable environmental laboratory with the ability to simultaneously analyze both organic pollutants and metal contaminants in environmental samples. The key component of the system is a new multichannel micro capillary electrochemical driven device that uses electrokinetic induced electroosmotic flow for both metal and organic separation and identification. This unit is highly synergistic to many of the complementary processing and analytical microfluidic device that have been developed by Lynntech for environmental monitoring. These include an electrochemical stripping and purge and trap system, and electrochemical micropump, a microelectrode system for stripping voltammetry analysis, and an optical detection system. In Phase I we will demonstrate a low cost, “Green Remediation” compliant remote monitoring system with the ability to detect both metal and organic contaminants from a mixture in levels below 10 ppb. There is a strong commercial pull for this technology. EPA policy along with customer feedback and need is driving the development of this product that fits directly into the growing $3.8 billion dollar instrumentation industry. The combination of “green technology”, very low reagent needs, long term remote monitoring capabilities, reduction in operational costs, and a strong commercial pull provides an environment for rapid market acceptance. As Lynntech moves from Phase I to Phase II we will engage the expertise of an external consulting group to conduct a TNA report based on our customer feedback, and other new commercial vendors on expanding our market share for this technology. "