SBIR Phase II: e-CHEM: A fully-autonomous connected in-situ chemical sensor

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project will be on public health, with the proposed "e-CHEM" solution enabling the monitoring of chemical water quality with high temporal resolution, providing early alerts when quality degrades. The World Health Organization has recognized water chemical safety risk management as essential for ensuring public health. By informing water utilities and end-users early on about problems in the drinking water quality or in the distribution infrastructure, the duration of poor tap water quality episodes can be drastically reduced. For the industrial sector, e-CHEM will measure wastewater contamination, allowing its effective treatment and reuse and limiting fresh source water use particularly in regions affected by drought. e-CHEM will have major commercial impact across multiple industries, minimizing costs, reducing liabilities, and improving health. This SBIR Phase II project proposes to commercialize the e-CHEM analyzer developed and pilot-tested in Phase I to provide a complete data analytics solution for performing water quality monitoring autonomously in critical applications where lack of infrastructure (power, communications), location remoteness, or limited human resources currently impose severe constraints. e-CHEM uses novel reagent-based and reagent-less lab-on-chip sensor technology to continuously quantify multiple water contaminants within a highly-miniaturized instrument, with accuracy and sensitivity levels approaching and even surpassing current laboratory capabilities. This Phase II project will involve a combination of fundamental and applied research aimed at improving the e-CHEM prototype for environmental variations during field operations, optimizing and ruggedizing the system for user operations, and developing machine learning algorithms for data analytics. After full validation of e-CHEM technology for drinking water, the e-CHEM system will also be adapted for harsh environments, such as monitoring of industrial wastewater from unconventional oil-and-gas operations. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.