CORDIS

Reducing amount of chemicals in manufacturing and agricultural production, municipal water preparation and filtering, and thus reducing contamination to residents, wildlife, and water sources represents the important social, ecological and technological task. One of possible ways to fulfil this task consists in transition from chemical to non-chemical water treatments, such as the controlled hydrodynamic cavitation, the high frequency electric/DC electric field pulsing or UV lighting for corrosion/microbiological/viscosity control in cooling/heating/osmosis applications. Weak non-chemical treatment is difficult to detect and to characterize by common methods of physicochemical analysis. The technology handled in the E-Spectr project addresses the problem of sensing ultra-weak ionic changes in fluidic media caused by non-chemical treatments (or by ultra-low concentrations of chemicals). This approach represents a new high-resolution sensing technology with applications for material spectroscopy in biology/chemistry, biotechnology, material science, water quality monitoring and robotics. The initial technology was developed in the EU-funded project ASSISI|bf, the launchpad project E-Spectr targets exploitation aspects with the overall objectives: a) to parametrize the excitation spectroscopy device to concrete application areas on the global market; b) to perform necessary certifications and documentation required for market introduction and production; c) to look for potential partners on global biotechnological/energetic market.

Considering three main objectives of this project, the performed works have been concentrated along the following main goals: 1) parametrizing hardware and software on application cases; 2) marketing, test production and packaging; 3) certification; 4) documentation and 5) demonstrations. These objectives and goals have been successfully achieved. The device received CE, FCC and WEEE certification/registration, business/production/demonstration test cases are prepared for the global market. User manuals on 8 languages, applications notes and video tutorials are prepared. Production documentation is prepared and mass-production is initiated. Multiple live-demonstrations have been performed during conferences and exhibitions with large auditoria in Bulgaria, Germany, China, Poland and USA during 2018-2020.

The main progress beyond the state of the art represents the easy-to-access and ready-to-use sensing technology in the field of non-chemical treatments of aqueous solutions. It is based on measuring ionic dynamics and possesses a high sensitivity and resolution. Largest socio-economic and ecological impact is achieved in the fields of water preparation and filtering as well as various experimental non-chemical approaches. Emergent effect represents a possibility of sensing macroscopic electrochemical parameters of fluids (e.g. the ionization constant, number and mobility of ions, thermochemical dynamics) influenced by microscopic processes on a quantum level (e.g. self-ionization process, proton tunneling effect, reconfigurations in molecular clusters). This enables new laboratory applications in science and technology. The device is on a global market in Europe, China, USA and other countries. Thus, the main goal of the launchpad project – to perform exploitation of technologies from academic research funded by European Commission – is considered as achieved.