Field Portable Methods for Rapid Water Quality Analysis.

摘要

The availability of potable water in the field is essential to protect the health of soldiers in combat and training. Increasingly, the danger of coliform bacteria and other pathogens in water supplies has become a major concern. Conventional methods based on cell culture techniques for the detection of pathogens or their indicator organisms can require 24 hours or more to complete. Moreover, the detection and measurement techniques used are often complicated and not portable. Recent and on-going advances in gene amplification and related measurement technologies have permitted in this Phase II SBIR project the development of a potentially poffable process to determine E. coli bacteria in water in less than three hours and with a sensitivity of one bacterium. The individual components employed in the water characterization process can easily be combined into a portable package for field evaluation of water quality. Subsequent improvements in the technology are expected to permit a near on line measurement capability and to extend the capability to other pathogens in an easy-to-use portable field kit configuration.