THESIS
2020
xiv, 67 pages : color illustrations ; 30 cm
Abstract
The increasing heavy metal pollution of our water supplies is a cause for grave concern.
Due to the rapid industrialisation during the 20th and the 21st century, our lakes, oceans and
rivers have seen a rise in contamination due to heavy metal particles, a by-product of industrial
and mining waste. Heavy metals such as cadmium, lead, mercury, zinc, etc. have been
demonstrated to have catastrophic effects to whole ecosystems. More importantly, these heavy
metal particles can often enter cities’ water supplies and end up causing grave health problems
to a larger part of the population. Heavy metal poisoning has been widely demonstrated to
affect many vital organs, causing chronic conditions and even death. For this purpose, testing
has become a habitual and important process when...[
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The increasing heavy metal pollution of our water supplies is a cause for grave concern.
Due to the rapid industrialisation during the 20th and the 21st century, our lakes, oceans and
rivers have seen a rise in contamination due to heavy metal particles, a by-product of industrial
and mining waste. Heavy metals such as cadmium, lead, mercury, zinc, etc. have been
demonstrated to have catastrophic effects to whole ecosystems. More importantly, these heavy
metal particles can often enter cities’ water supplies and end up causing grave health problems
to a larger part of the population. Heavy metal poisoning has been widely demonstrated to
affect many vital organs, causing chronic conditions and even death. For this purpose, testing
has become a habitual and important process when assessing the quality of our water supplies.
Water testing for heavy metal particles has historically been championed by atomic absorption
spectroscopy (AAS), inductively coupled plasma mass spectroscopy (ICP-MS), and
electrochemical sensors. Nonetheless, these methods are low-throughput, costly and non-portable,
making testing in remote areas troublesome. A novel technique, with the use of
genetically modified whole-cell bacteria has been proposed to overcome these problems.
Bacterial whole-cell biosensors are a low cost, high-throughput, sensitive alternative to
traditional water quality assays. Bacterial whole-cell biosensors are amenable to
miniaturization. Therefore, microfluidic cell culturing becomes a great candidate for
miniaturising these assays. In this thesis several microfluidic approaches are introduced for
bacterial on-chip cell culture. Additionally, a single-layer microfluidic valve is presented and
fabricated to culture bacterial biosensors. The results indicate that the LOD of this bacterial
biosensor is of 44.8 ppb for cadmium heavy metal particles.
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