Project description
In pursuit of cleaner drinking water
Contaminated drinking water affects our health, the environment and the industry. To date, water utilities (WUs) have been forced to be reactive rather than proactive in their monitoring of drinking water quality because standard microbiological methods are time-consuming and conducted manually. The EU-funded SIM project aims to help WUs be proactive through an automated incubator with an integrated microprocessor. By determining the number of colonies, storing them along with other sample characteristics and automatically producing a report, the system will enable daily water analysis and provide a 15 % added value per WU employee. The project will contribute to significant savings in healthcare insurance and reduce environmental damage.
Objective
Did you know, that only 0,4% of the Earth's water is accessible to us as drinking water? Contaminated drinking water has an effect on healthcare, on the environment and on the industry. Due to poor drinking water quality, the society has lost trust in the drinking water. Who is feeling the most pain because of it? The Water Utilities (WUs). They are responsible for the drinking water quality. On one hand, they are dealing with stricter regulation and inspections and on the other, they are compensating bursts of bacterial contaminations. They are forced to a reactive approach of monitoring rather than a proactive approach (acting before user complaints) because the standard microbiological methods are: 1) time consuming, 2) manual, 3) requiring months of complex work before discovering the source of contamination.
Microbium d.o.o is a successful company with expertise in Microbiology and a passion for Computer Science. We have a vision to become the world leader at providing systems for detection of microbial contamination. As a company, we were successful in a number of industrial projects and were named as one of the most prospective start-ups by the Slovene Enterprise Fund and by the EU’s climate innovation initiative Climate KIC. We have developed a SIM incubator – the first automatized incubator with an integrated advanced microprocessor, that enables the encoding of computer vision and machine learning. The system will be able to automatically obtain number of colonies on solid medium, store and archive them along with other sample characteristics and automatically produce a report. The system will provide a 15% added value per employee in WUs and enable daily water analysis. This will affect healthcare leading to 32 billion € of savings of insurance cost and the environment, saving at least 1 billion € of environmental damage costs! The system will also offer 162 new jobs in 5 years after commercialization start.
Fields of science
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringwater treatment processesdrinking water treatment processes
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringcomputer hardwarecomputer processors
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringwaste management
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental scienceshydrology
- engineering and technologymaterials engineering
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
1261 LJUBLJANA
Slovenia
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.