Potable water is a very important commodity. Due to increased human activity, the ground water and surface water have been depleting and have got polluted too. Out of the total water on earth, only 1 per cent is available for human consumption. On top of it, the existing water purification system (reverse osmosis, RO) wastes more than 60 per cent of water. Therefore it is not a sustainable technology. Our initial analysis predicts that the problem of water is localized (geological), so we should not apply any universal solution. Hence it is very important to analyze the feed-water and thereby treat the water accordingly. Also, the water-cleaning process itself should not create more problems. For analysis of the feed water used for drinking, we need a sensor.

Focusing on contamination, arsenic is a major problem leading to health hazards in major areas of India and other nations. The arsenic poisoning is not only limited to a developing country but the large population is exposed to arsenic in many developed countries like USA and Canada. The proposed work in this project will investigate the method of arsenic detection and measurement. Various sensing techniques are reported; however, all suffer from the specificity problem when analyzing real samples. There is a large interference due to other ions. Thus the need of the hour is to develop a highly specific sensing platform that can do the sensing of arsenic automatically, without the need of any experts. Based on the success of this project, we will go into partnering with other organizations or implementing it for specific target groups.