Global Utilities

Grants - Detail

School of Engineering & Mathematical Sciences

Sensors Systems for Analysis of Aquatic Environments
Understanding water quality, its variability and its chemical and biological constituents are of vital importance for the well-being of Australians and our environment. Sensors play an important part in gathering information about water in rural and marine environments. This cluster will develop a new generation of sensors for aquatic environments that represent a step forward in capability for both fresh water and marine environments.

CSIRO has a number of flagship programs addressing national challenges of water management and the impact of ocean changes on Australia's climate and marine ecosystems. The availability of reliable and affordable sensors is critical for achieving these goals. Australia’s Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) is a $50 million national collaborative facility in which the Wealth from Oceans Flagship (WfO) plays a key role, and the new sensors developed in this cluster will enable greater deployment and more accurate data collection to monitor the oceans around Australia. Similarly, the new sensors will enhance the ability of the Water Resources Observation Network (WRON) theme in The Water for a Healthy Country Flagship (WHC) to provide dynamic, timely reporting and forecasting of Australia’s water resources.

There currently are commercial sensing systems able to monitor a few general parameters such as temperature, conductivity, depth pH, turbidity and dissolved oxygen, but significant challenges remain in their use with regard to affordability, performance, field implementation, and remote accessibility. Critically, there are no sensors suitable to monitor important and specific chemical and biological parameters: nutrient levels, organic pollutants, pathogens and biota. Sensing these parameters forms the key research focus of this cluster.

The approach in the cluster is to combine diverse capabilities provided by the cluster participants in the area of nutrient sensing, detection of heavy metals, organic pollutants and pathogens, with CSIRO’s expertise in distributed sensor networks, the aquatic environment, and in-field implementation to ensure successful development, application, and commercialisation of the new sensors. The CSIRO Niche Manufacturing Flagship will play a pivotal role to integrate these capabilities and focus the research activities towards the desired outcomes. More specifically, the cluster will focus on development of user-intervention free (e.g. simply dip the sensor into the sample for analysis) sensors leading to the ideal scenario of a network of sensors that may be operated remotely to monitor a range of analytes. It is important that sensors developed by the cluster are attractive to manufacturers so they can be created in large quantities and delivered to end users. The manufacturability and cost of the new sensors will be addressed by the cluster in collaboration with the Niche Manufacturing Flagship. From the outset, manufacturability will be considered, thus ensuring the sensor designs will be compatible with low-cost microfabrication methods that are amenable to mass production.

The cluster outcomes will be delivered by the following four themes:

1) Immunosensors for small organic molecules

2) Field Based Nutrient Sensors/Analysers for Portable, In-situ and Online Applications

3) Advanced Membrane Chemistry for Preconcentration and Calibration Free Sensing

4) Economical microfluidic sensing platforms for pathogens and other analytes

Details of the Project involving La Trobe

Theme 4: Cheap microfluidic sensing platforms for pathogens and other analytes

Researchers: Friend (Monash – leader), Aguilar (Monash – proteoliposome chemistry), Pigram (La Trobe – Surface chemistry)

A major detection need for management of water supplies and wastewater is pathogen detection. This need is only becoming greater with the increased use of recycled water. The challenge is significant as detection technologies need to rapidly detect down to one coliform unit per 100 millilitres. Hence preconcentration of samples is required. We propose a robust, self-contained and economical microdevice, combining new technologies in microfluidics with proteoliposome-entrapped nanomaterials on surfaces for the detection of waterborne cryptosporidium, serving as an important representative of potential pathogens that may be detected with our scheme. Detection is achieved using total internal reflectance fluorescence spectroscopy which enables optical detection in turbid solutions. The microsensor system is filter-free and without mechanically moving parts that is field-deployable. The technology is made possible by a novel piezoelectrically-driven acoustic intake pump and pre-concentrator able to continuously concentrate bioparticulate matter from fluid samples without clogging the microfluidics structure or lysing of the bioparticles with a secondary stage containing a detection surface and fluid acoustic micromixer. These features decrease sensing time from minutes to seconds.

Expertise in surface functionalisation will come from the Shapter group at Flinders, the Pigram group at LaTrobe, and in-house expertise in proteoliposomes and sol-gels. Further, the electroacoustic irradiation technology used in pumping, mixing, and concentration has long been known to be useful for concurrent viscosity, salinity, and density measurements of water and saltwater, and will be tested with themes 1 and 3 for antifouling and specific functionalisation behaviour in conjunction with the activity in the WfO Flagship. These devices are compatible with specialised bulk manufacture, thus aligning the theme with the goals of the Niche Manufacturing Flagship and the target analytes are relevant to the mission of the WHC flagship.
Content Approved by: Head of School
Page maintained by: Web Administrator
Last Updated: 15 August, 2008

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