A Review of State‐of‐the‐Art Microfluidic Technologies for Environmental Applications: Detection and Remediation

Abstract

Microfluidic systems have advanced beyond natural and life science applications and lab‐on‐a‐chip uses. A growing trend of employing microfluidic technologies for environmental detection has emerged thanks to the precision, time‐effectiveness, and cost‐effectiveness of advanced microfluidic systems. This paper reviews state‐of‐the‐art microfluidic technologies for environmental applications, such as on‐site environmental monitoring and detection. Microdevices are extensively used in collecting environmental samples as a means to facilitate detection and quantification of targeted components with minimal quantities of samples. Likewise, microfluidic‐inspired approaches for separation and treatment of contaminated water and air, such as the removal of heavy metals and waterborne pathogens from wastewater and carbon capture are also investigated.

Bacterial chemotaxis: a way forward to aromatic compounds biodegradation

“…Microfluidics has been extensively applied for environmental applications such as graphene-based microbots for toxic heavy metal recovery from wastewater streams [153], photocatalytic water treatment [154], and utilization in mini-metagenomics to identify novel microbial lineage in environmental samples [155]. However, literature is unable to furnish much data regarding the utilization of microfluidic systems for polycyclic aromatic compounds degradation by microorganisms.…”

On-chip density-based sorting of supercooled droplets and frozen droplets in continuous flow

“…Indeed, there are any number of on-chip microanalytical techniques that could be applied to the chemical or biological analysis of the separated populations. 99,100 In addition to sorting droplets for collection, the separation of water droplets and ice crystals into different channels also provides an alternative avenue for determining the fraction frozen of a droplet population at a given temperature, f ice (T). Fraction frozen data allows information to be gleaned from both homogeneous ice nucleation (i.e.…”

Towards the Development of Rapid and Low-Cost Pathogen Detection Systems Using Microfluidic Technology and Optical Image Processing

“…For the purpose of this paper, the main focus will be to detect and monitor 'acting' pathogens via a smart designed system. In the past few years, microfluidic systems have been intensely researched to advance applications in the fields of chemistry, biology, genomics, proteomics, pharmaceuticals, biodefense [13] emerging as a powerful useful technology. Large processes that once were carried out in bulky, slow, expensive equipment are now processed on a single miniaturized chip.…”

“…In addition, microchannels typically have a width of 100-800 µm which allows advantages of sample consumption to be reduced, whilst also increasing the speed of results. This allows increasing efficiency and an inexpensive process [12,13].…”