Evaluation of a Novel Sensor for Water Testing

Our innovative instrument has the technological ability of measuring contamination in water with a sampling time of one second. This sensor can measure three major types of contamination (Total Suspended Solids (TSS), Total Dissolved Solids (TDS), and microbiological contamination) in water with the same sensor cell. Its quick response time and its broad applications is the primary difference of our novel sensor from others on the market. This sensor has immediate application in both the developed and developing world. As the need for freshwater increases due to rising population and global drought, so does the requirement to ensure the water is safe for human consumption as well as industrial and medical use. The development of these sensors and the accompanying validation testing has provided us with valuable tools and insight into its potential implementation into a multitude of applications. Dilution series of Return Activated Sludge (RAS) and lead (II) chloride were prepared with distilled water at known concentrations and were tested by this novel sensor to evaluate its accuracy and speed of contaminant detection. Two milliliters of each solution were placed on the sensor for ten minutes and values of contamination were displayed by an accompanying software as sensor output counts. A baseline value of sensor output counts was established for distilled water, and the output counts returned from the sensor for the various concentrations of contamination were compared against the baseline. As samples of the dilution series of the target pollutants were introduced to the “active sensing area” of the sensor, we observed that the higher the concentration of the pollutants the higher the output counts of the sensor