Water quality monitoring system based on microfluidic device

Abstract

Water is one of the basic necessities in life. In Malaysia, Ammonia NH3 is found to be one of the main causes of water pollution according to Jabatan Alam Sekitar (JAS). To minimize this issue, this paper proposes an alternative way to detect ammonia content in the river using a microfluidic device. The microfluidic device is based on electrochemical detection that uses an ammonia ion-selective electrode in order to detect the ammonia content in water. The main advantage of this method is able to detect ammonia content in water and short response time. Ammonia ion-selective electrode has a selective membrane which only allows the ammonia ion to pass through. The microfluidic device was designed and simulated in COMSOL software. The proposed microfluidic device will be optimized using finite element analysis (FEA) in COMSOL software and the performance of the proposed microfluidic device will be validated by comparing the simulations’ results and the theoretical results. It is found that the proposed solution follows the Nernst equation with a short response time, i.e. 4 seconds. The ion-selective electrode showed an ion-selective towards ammonia ion that only allow ammonia ion to pass through the selective membrane. The proposed solution can be used for ammonia detection in water quality monitoring.