Low Cost And Field-portable Smartphone Platform Water Testing Kit For Detection And Analysis Of Contaminants In Drinking Water
Guide By :
Dr. Pabitra Nath
Degree :
College :
Tezpur University, Assam
Water quality analyzing tools such as spectrophotometer are generally expensive and require expertise to handle and can’t be used for in-field sensing. We have demonstrated a smartphone based low cost and field portable photometric sensor for detection of chemical contaminants in drinking water. We have utilized the ambient light sensor (ALS) of the smartphone as light intensity detector. An android application has been developed which can detect intensity of the light signal propagating through a cuvette containing contaminating water and determine the amount of chemical contaminant present from an internal calibration curve.
As per the eleventh five year plan document of India (2007-12), there are about 2.17 lakh regions in the country with more than half affected with excess iron, followed by fluoride, salinity, nitrate and arsenic in drinking water. Further, approximately, 10 million cases of diarrhea, more than 7.2 lakh typhoid cases and 1.5 lakh viral hepatitis cases are being reported every year. Majority of such cases are contributed due to unclean water supply and poor sanitation. Early detection of chemical contamination in drinking water resources may save thousands of lives. Most of the detection methods for water contamination are confined to laboratory due to its time consuming measurement procedure and the use of bulky instruments such as spectrophotometer in colorimetric tests. Again most of the low cost paper strip based detection method only gives the indication of the presences of the contaminant but it is unable to quantify its exact amount. The rural and remote locations of our region are not connected directly to proper water quality monitoring facility. People from these regions are in high risk of serious health hazards due to unavailability of local laboratory support to detect chemical contaminations such as fluoride contamination in their drinking water sources. Water samples from these regions are usually sent to the central water quality monitoring laboratory and the process of estimating fluoride concentration is an in-efficient and time consuming process. To initiate any removal program one has to know the chemical contaminant present in the water in exact amount. Even if the proper laboratory facility is available; it needs necessary expertise to handle the aforementioned testing tools.
According to TRAI the total wireless subscribers in India is around 1034.25 million till April 2016 with 447.84 million are from rural areas and the remaining 568.41 million users are from urban areas (http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/WhatsNew/Documents/PR-TSD-120315.pdf). The total population of India is estimated to be 1320 million till 2016; these data signifies that it is possible to find a phone with almost every individual in our country.
In the present invention we are converting the smartphone into a laboratory grade low cost, robust and field portable water quality monitoring kit to detect and quantify water contaminants such as Fluoride, turbidity and salinity. Using the same kit all the color based water quality monitoring can be possible. We have used the illumination sensor or ambient light sensor (ALS) of the smartphone as a detector and its optical LED flash as a light source to convert the smartphone in to a photometric sensor for its utilization in water quality monitoring. We have developed simple and user friendly android platform based application for real time detection and analysis. We have incorporated the visual gesture indication in the application so that people without any proper scientific knowledge can easily handle the kit. Using the same application real time reporting and data sharing could be possible using the existing communication facility of the phone.
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