Disruptive portable device for pre-screening of Persistent Organic Pollutants –POPs- in food products and water

Información del proyecto

NANOSCREEN

Identificador del acuerdo de subvención: 710537

DOI

10.3030/710537

Proyecto cerrado

Fecha de la firma de la CE 17 Diciembre 2015

Fecha de inicio 1 Diciembre 2015

Fecha de finalización 30 Abril 2016

Financiado con arreglo a

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine, maritime and inland water research, and the bioeconomy

Coste total

€ 71 429,00

Aportación de la UE

€ 50 000,00

Coordinado por

SAFTRA PHOTONICS SRO
Slovakia

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - NANOSCREEN (Disruptive portable device for pre-screening of Persistent Organic Pollutants –POPs- in food products and water)

Período documentado: 2015-12-01 hasta 2016-04-30

Resumen del contexto y de los objetivos generales del proyecto

Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) are ubiquitous chemical substances that persist in the environment and bioaccumulate in humans mainly through feeding. They cause harmful effects which include damage in the reproductive health or even cancer. In the developed countries there is a strong legal framework that must be followed in order to reduce POPs burden, which includes analysis and detection. In this sense, gas chromatography and/or mass spectroscopy (GC-MS) are the common methods for POPs detection nowadays. However, their use entails some drawbacks:

-The test must be done in a lab. Hence, it is wasted a significant amount of time and money for transport.
-The laborious sample preparation (extraction/purification) and the equipment cost (≃€100.000) raise the final cost per sample due to the highly specialized personal required and a long amortization period.
-Consequently, the price per assay is high (€1,000 to 500) only considering reagents and energy required. This fact represents the larger barrier to perform a higher number of assays a year, which involve a lower quality control.

SAFTRA Photonics will put in the market a portable nano-optical sensing chip, NanoScreen, which will serve as a triage technique to detect in-situ and simultaneously (multiplexing) the most harmful POPs in any water or food matrix at an inexpensive price and in a short time-span, via a simpler procedure with respect current methods.

Trabajo realizado desde el comienzo del proyecto hasta el final del período abarcado por el informe y los principales resultados hasta la fecha

In order to confirm the feasibility of our project we have carried out a 6-month study consisting on:
-Our technical studies have proved the multiplexing capacity of our sensing chips and the perfect feasibility to differentiate the signal from several POPs. This fact will allow achieving remarkable cost savings per analysis which reach up to 90% of the current methodologies.
- Our market analysis has demonstrated that our target markets are relevant, and show great potential for growth (€2,5-4 billion by 2020). This, together with the uniqueness of our solution (no competitor has a pre-screening method) and the favorable legislative context (regarding environmental regulation) represents a very promising scenario for the deployment of our technology.
- Our thorough financial analysis has demonstrated the economic feasibility of our technologies, with precisely calculated production costs which are realistic and really competitive with those technologies currently in the market. Moreover, our forecast show that the impact can have a relevant economic effect, enabling us to achieve revenues of approx. €14.2 million in the fifth year of commercialization.
- Addressing of all kinds of contacts relevant for our project (collaborators, partners and investors), receiving several letters of support/intent.
- Development of complete Execution Plan for the Phase 2 project, including planning, organization, risk analysis and budget.

Avances que van más allá del estado de la técnica e impacto potencial esperado (incluida la repercusión socioeconómica y las implicaciones sociales más amplias del proyecto hasta la fecha)

The unparalleled advantages of NanoScreen project regarding cost and speed will put our product in a really strong position into market, which will assure a larger market share and penetration.
Our preliminary case-studies show potential savings of 90% per analysis which proves the high added value of our proposal. By achieving our goal we will offer an alternative several steps ahead from any competitor and keeping prices in a range that any of our customers can afford, we estimate that we will put in the European, Japanese and USA market 55,000 of units by 2022, with revenue in 2023 of €4,841,000, a ROI of 2.25 and creating 9 job positions.

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