Most of the urban population in India use UV filtration at home for drinking water. Similarly, there are a large number of products available in the market that does water treatment and claims to produce water quality as per the standards required for drinking or recreational water.
The question is how does the end-user know that the water treatment units are working in perfect condition? The answer lies in developing innovative, rapid and cheap water monitoring sensors that can be deployed in houses as well as industrial waste water treatment units, which will be able to quantify the level of pathogens and heavy metal in water, says Sushanta Mitra, assistant vicepresident (Research) and professor of mechanical engineering, University of Alberta, Canada. A team led by Mitra has developed a rapid water monitoring sensor which can detect a small amount of E. coli (one of the common pathogens) in water.
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