UK team leads effort to develop drinking water analysis tool

Led by the University of East Anglia, the €9m Aquavalens project aims to give large water utilities, small private supplies and the food industry the technology required to quickly detect viruses, bacteria and parasites in water before they can make people sick.

‘We’re looking at the use of these technologies at any point in the water or food chain where using those technologies could improve safety,’ project leader Prof Paul Hunter from UEA’s Norwich Medical School told The Engineer.

Funded through the European Union’s Framework Programme 7, the project will be executed in four parts.

‘Cluster One is mostly related to biological aspect: how can you detect the specificity, infectivity and virulence of pathogens in, say, drinking water and food [production] using molecular methods?’ said Prof Marc Desmulliez, head of sensors, signals and systems at Heriot-Watt University, an academic partner on the project.

‘The idea of Cluster Two is to integrate different systems such as the sampling of the water, the filtration of the water, the detection [of pathogens] using this molecular method.’