Sandia and Tenix complete testing of water monitoring system

It was back in late 2004 that Sandia National Labs announced a multiyear research agreement with Tenix Investments to develop a unattended water sensor (UWS) for municipal monitoring. Now we can report that a prototype has not only emerged — it has just succesfully completed a year of testing at a large water utility in the San Francisco area.

“The initial research and development was focused on defining the system, identifying its core capability, and developing a concrete tool that does what we wanted it to do,” said Tenix’s Chris Macintosh. “The next phase of the design will be to take this knowledge and develop a product suitable for use by the water industry.”

Sandia’s UWS (measuring 17 inches high by 14 inches wide by 7 inches deep) is a box composed of analytic instruments, pumps, tubes, and small reservoirs to handle minute amounts of fluid. The reservoirs, playfully referred to by Sandia researchers as the “juice bar,” contain chemical buffers, fluorescent dyes, proteins, and separation gel. The diagnostic instrumentation package, based on Sandia’s well-known MicroChemLab technology, is mounted near the water supply. The box is connected to a small, submerged probe that transports the sample into the system. Largely due to the automated sample preparation technology, the UWS is currently able to achieve sample analysis in just twelve minutes