Photo: HORIBAThis article is presented by HORIBA
The world’s population depends on clean drinking water. Methods for measuring contaminants in wastewater, including dissolved organic matter are evolving with the use of proven techniques, improving the processes’ efficiency, effectiveness, and economics.
But varying regional economic conditions still pose challenges.
Just ask Professor Shane Snyder, Ph.D. He is a world-renowned wastewater contaminant expert. He oversees a staff of 300 people as the Executive Director of the Nanyang Environment & Water Research Institute (NEWRI) at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore. He’s also a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering there.
Prof. Snyder spent the last two decades conducting research on the identification, fate and health relevance of emerging water pollutants. He and his team have published hundreds of manuscripts and book chapters on emerging contaminant analysis, treatment, and toxicology. That work produced over 30,000 citations thus far.i
So, when he talks about ways to detect wastewater contaminants, people pay attention.
“There’s several fronts that we’re working on,” he said. “My Ph.D. was on trying to identify estrogen compounds and complex mixtures of wastewater that were having an impact on the fish population. I started that work back in the 1990s, and I think we’ve progressed a long way. I’ve always worked with in vitro cellular bioassays to screen complex mixtures in the environment, and then usually using mass spectrometry to try to identify contaminants.”
Today, the area that he works on the most is how to do things faster and online, using sensor technologies and simpler measurements that can be representative of the broader classes in a tiered structure.
