A spinout from the University of Oxford has built a chemical sensor the size of a portable device that can detect pollutants in rivers and lakes in real time, without needing lab equipment or constant maintenance. Current water monitoring relies on sending samples to labs, which is slow and expensive. Water companies in the UK spend over £1 billion in capital costs and more than £300 million per year on operating costs to meet regulatory monitoring requirements. Mode Labs’ sensor uses a patented optical microcavity to achieve 10,000 times greater sensitivity than existing field sensors, while consuming 1,000 times less consumables and 400 times less power. The device is self-cleaning and self-calibrating, allowing battery-powered deployments up to six times longer than competitors. If successful, this Innovate UK project will produce a low-cost, portable sensor that measures Total Phosphorus and Ammonia continuously in natural waterways. Water companies could then target pollution interventions precisely, cutting capital and operating costs. The same platform can later be adapted to detect pesticides, herbicides, and pharmaceutical contaminants in water supplies, and expand into aquaculture, process control, and security markets.
View original technical description
Mode Labs is a spinout from the University of Oxford's Departments of Chemistry and Materials that is developing next generation compact chemical sensors. Our novel chemical sensing platform delivers plug and play laboratory capabilities in the field, with 10,000x increased sensitivity provided by our patented optical microcavity technology. A platform technology, it can be expanded to almost any analyte in liquid, with applications across water, aquaculture, and security markets. Our devices use 1,000x less consumables and 400x less power than competitor devices, allowing us to package them into a compact system that can be deployed almost anywhere on battery power for extended periods of time. The system is self cleaning and self calibrating, reducing the maintenance burden for our customers and allowing for deployments up to 6x longer than competitor devices. This Innovate UK project will provide support for the construction and field testing of miniaturised remote autonomous sensors for environmental monitoring of Total Phosphorus and Ammonia in rivers and lakes. As a result, Mode Labs will be able to provide a low cost, portable, real time method for speciating and quantifying pollutants in natural waterways, allowing targeted intervention, reducing capital expenditure and operating costs for water companies (\>£1B CAPEX and \>£300M per year OPEX savings in the UK) for regulation mandated monitoring. This device would then act as a platform from which we can target emerging contaminants of concern, including pesticides, herbicides, and pharmaceutical contaminants in water supplies, as well as expanding into adjacent markets in aquaculture, process control and security.
Plain English summaries and category classifications on this site are generated by AI and may not perfectly reflect the original research.
Is something wrong? Let us know