Microfluidic Sensors for In-line Water Monitoring Applications

The proposed SBIR project addresses the U.S. Army’s desire to confirm, on a real-time basis, the quality of drinking water supplies produced by Military tactical water purification systems that are used to ensure the safety of U.S. soldiers. The development/commercialization of new microfluidic sensors, as discussed herein, provides an innovative solution for reliably integrating together a multitude of water quality measurements (i.e., TDS, pH, turbidity, free chlorine residual, temperature, TOC, DO, conductivity, etc.) inside an autonomous, in-line sensor package. For example, microfluidic-based sensors (i.e., MEMs, Micro Analytical Systems, Lab-On-A-Chip Devices, etc.) have unprecedented commercial potential for enabling new water monitoring breakthroughs for military, government and commercial sector applications. Value-added benefits that make microfluidic sensors commercially attractive include: low end-user costs, simple/non-technical deployment capabilities, device ruggedness, fast response times and excellent sensitivity/selectivity to the desired target analytes in the presence of chemical/physical interferences. Phase I research efforts will focus on demonstrating the technical efficacy of the proposed microfluidic sensor technology in relation to commercially available water quality sensors/analyzers, which are presently used to continually (versus periodically) verify the proper operation of water purification systems in real time.