Grant: Applied Research and Development Grants - Level 2

Water is essential to our lives and is our most precious resource, yet our ability to monitor the quality of water assets quickly, reliably, and on site is lacking. Traditional water quality analysis methods conducted through analytical laboratory-based technologies are complex, time consuming and costly. By combining biology and engineering, FREDsense Technologies Corporation developed an award winning biosensor platform, which uses living cells to quickly detect and report water-borne chemicals and contaminants, without the need to ship samples for costly analysis at a laboratory. The platform has been proven to be a rapid, user-friendly water monitoring technique that enables analysis of complex samples directly in the field without lengthy preparation steps. However, the company is facing one major obstacle - the current manual water injection hinders application of the platform in remote areas. The Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT) and FREDsense propose to advance the company's initial development and design of an automated water quality monitoring biosensor designed to work with their Field-Ready Electrochemical Detector (FRED®). The Engage grant completed between SAIT and FREDsense developed a baseline design and preliminary plan for the automated water sampler. This three year project will build a fully functional prototype automated biosensor for water quality monitoring capable of automatic water sample collection, evaluating the sample for contaminants and wirelessly transferring data. The prototype will be tested in the laboratory and the field. The opportunity to protect against the ill effects of arsenic and other containments in water is moving closer to a commercial solution that will be benefit the oil and gas, mining, agriculture and other industries, as well as communities and municipalities. Affordable, accurate portable automated water quality sensor device resulting from this project has the potential to be applied around the world where water quality is a concern.