Aquatest

Challenge:

The Aquatest Research Programme is an international, multi-disciplinary consortium led by the University of Bristol and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.  Kinneir Dufort is supporting the Aquatest team with the specific challenge to develop a small, single-use, low-cost  device for testing water quality in developing countries.  It should be suitable for use in the field, without electricity or skilled technicians, and should provide information on the amount of contamination in the sampled water.  The Aquatest system needs to be sensitive enough to detect one E. coli colony in the 100ml sample. This is equivalent to finding a single coffee bean in 40,000 Olympic-size swimming pools. The ultimate goal will be to provide water quality testing to a wide range of urban and rural communities, helping to reduce diarrhoeal and other water-borne diseases.

Solution:

The design is in the process of being refined through a process of laboratory and user testing, but will comprise:

• 100ml collected in the device
• Reagent released into the water on closing the device
• Device incubated for 24 hours in a custom field incubator
• Results read using UV torch
• Contamination level derived from number of positive chambers
• Final step decontaminates the sample rendering it safe