Project description
Rapid, portable detection of contaminated water
Globally, 2 billion people drink water tainted with faeces, with traditional testing taking 10 to 24 hours. This delay is critical, given the urgent need for immediate and reliable water safety assessments to meet the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Supported by the Marie Sklodowska-Curie programme, the RIFF project aims to revolutionise water quality testing by shifting from faecal indicator bacteria to faecal indicator pigments. RIFF is developing a rapid, portable, and cost-effective device featuring a specially designed hybrid filter membrane that detects faecal pigments in real time. This innovation will not only streamline water safety testing, but also offer a practical solution to global health challenges associated with contaminated drinking water.
Objective
WHO estimates that 2 billion people worldwide consume drinking water that has been contaminated with faeces, yet scientific testing for faecal contamination in water currently takes at least 10 to 24 h, as per UNICEF reports. Thus, there is an urgent need for methods that allow to unequivocally test drinking water quality on site, therefore significantly contributing to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, in particular to SDG 6 (access to clean water and sanitation). However, currently, no rapid, portable, sensitive and cost-effective method or device for the detection of faecal pigments outside of a lab is available. The proposed sustainable method to be developed in RIFF represents a shift from a faecal indicator bacteria (FIB) to a faecal indicator pigment (FIP) paradigm in faecal contaminant detection technology. This interdisciplinary project will demonstrate (1) a rapid and cost-effective sensory device for the real-time analysis of FIPs having as (2) a key element, a specifically tailored hybrid filter membrane for selective and sensitive FIP enrichment and detection (10 pg/L to 1 µg/L). Besides membrane tailoring for selective FIP capture, interfacial chemistry and assay integration will enhance the detection performance of a final device. The proposed method eliminates the need for solution-based FIP analysis, thus mitigating the technical issues associated with real-time water quality testing as well as bringing user-friendliness and operational stability. Hence RIFF will have a significant societal impact towards providing novel solutions for health challenges associated with drinking water contamination. The successful completion of the project will give me the opportunity to acquire multidisplinary skills in the field of sensor material development, device construction and rapid testing, which is necessary for establishing my future research career as an independent researcher in the field of water research & water quality monitoring.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
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Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European FellowshipsCoordinator
12205 Berlin
Germany