Real-Time Monitoring of Tetraselmis suecica in A Saline Environment as Means of Early Water Pollution Detection

Abstract

Biological water pollution, including organic pollutants and their possible transportation, via biofouling and ballast water, has the potential to cause severe economic and health impacts on society and environment. Current water pollution monitoring methods are limited by transportation of samples to the laboratory for analysis, which could take weeks. There is an urgent need for a water quality monitoring technique that generates real-time data. The study aims to assess the feasibility of three sensing techniques to detect and monitor the concentrations of the model species Tetraselmis suecica in real-time using eleven samples for each method. Results showed UV-Vis spectrophotometer detected increasing concentration of Tetraselmis suecica with R2 = 0.9627 and R2 = 0.9672, at 450 nm and 650 nm wavelengths, respectively. Secondly, low-frequency capacitance measurements showed a linear relationship with increasing concentration of Tetraselmis suecica at 150 Hz (R2 = 0.8463) and 180 Hz (R2 = 0.8391). Finally, a planar electromagnetic wave sensor measuring the reflected power S11 amplitude detected increasing cell density at 4 GHz (R2 = 0.8019).

Functionalised microwave sensors for real-time monitoring of copper and zinc concentration in mining-impacted water

“…The uncoated planar sensors used in this paper, specifically eight-pair gold IDE on PTFE substrates, have been shown to be able to distinguish changes in the cell concentration of Tetraselmis suecica (Moejes et al 2018) at 4 GHz, and changes in Pb ions, detected at 2.5 GHz (Frau et al 2018a). However, this sensing structure alone is not reliable for distinguishing such similar pollutants in water as Cu and Zn.…”

“…Current research has demonstrated the possibility to determine the presence and concentration of specific components and pollutants in water, e.g. lead ions (Pb 2+ ) (Frau et al 2018a), sugars (Harnsoongnoen et al 2018), nitrates (Cashman et al 2017), phosphate (Nag et al 2019), antibiotics (Mason et al 2018), silver materials (Ateeq et al 2017), water in fuel (Andria et al 2019), marine algae (Moejes et al 2018), liquid mixtures, as acetone and water (Wei et al 2018), ethanol and water Wiltshire and Zarifi 2018).…”

Recent Progress in Micro- and Nanotechnology-Enabled Sensors for Biomedical and Environmental Challenges

“…On the other hand, in the environmental realm, these waves find applications in remote sensing, pollution monitoring, and climate research, as well as the identification and analysis of specific chemical compounds and environmental pollution detection [ 116 , 117 ]. Frau et al developed a novel technique using microwave spectroscopy and planar sensors for the real-time in situ monitoring of water quality, specifically targeting trace metals in polluted mining areas, and demonstrated the immediate response and classification of water pollution levels based on multiple resonant peaks in the GHz range, which represents a significant advancement in quantifying pollutants in water [ 116 ].…”

Real-Time Water Quality Monitoring with Chemical Sensors

“…During the last few years, several planar microwave sensors with different conformations have been developed and tested for differentiate compositions of water for both qualitative and quantitative concentration measurements [ 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 ]. Between planar sensing structures, Korostynska et al [ 49 ] confirmed the action of a novel planar sensor with a sensing element consisted of interdigitated electrodes (IDE, also defined as interdigital by other researchers) metal patterns (silver, gold and/or copper) for water analysis observing changes in the microwave part of the EM spectrum analysing 20 µL of deionized water (DIW), KCl, NaCl and MnCl at various concentrations ( Figure 9 a,b).…”

“…Between planar sensing structures, Korostynska et al [ 49 ] confirmed the action of a novel planar sensor with a sensing element consisted of interdigitated electrodes (IDE, also defined as interdigital by other researchers) metal patterns (silver, gold and/or copper) for water analysis observing changes in the microwave part of the EM spectrum analysing 20 µL of deionized water (DIW), KCl, NaCl and MnCl at various concentrations ( Figure 9 a,b). Then, Mason et al [ 50 ], Moejes et al [ 51 ] and Frau et al [ 52 ] demonstrated the ability to detect respectively Lincomycin and Tylosin antibiotics, Tetraselmis suecica and lead ions (Pb 2+ ) using gold (Au) eight-pair IDE sensors.…”