Multichannel Lipid Membrane Sensor for Evaluation of Water Quality

Detection of some toxic substances in water is a time consuming process because large number of substances need to be analyzed. When some toxic substances in the drains flow into the river, they cause environmental destruction. Accurate detection of substances which have serious effects on living organism is required as well as short measurement time. Although a sensing system employing living fish is devised, there are some problems in reliability, maintenance and evaluation because they are living thing. It is possible to measure the influence of pollutant for living organism directly by a sensor which is similar to biological systems. So we investigate a method of detection of toxic substances by multichannel lipid membrane sensors which are modeled on living organism. SA401 has multichannel sensor with lipid membranes which are modeled on living organism. It is able to detect some toxic substances in the water. For the reason, this system has been applied to measure water quality, such as, mineral water, tap water, contaminated river water and factory drains. We have found this method is effective and many pollutants (e. g. CN^-, Fe³⁺, Cu²⁺, etc.), in factory drains, have been measured in a few minutes, the detection limits are lower than regulations of drain. It is possible to detect cyanide of factory drains selectively in short time by applying lipid membrane sensor. In conclusion, it is an effective mean to use multichannel lipid membrane sensors for observation of water quality especially for factory drains.