Detection and Quantification of Arsenic in Contaminated Drinking Water Using Electronic Tongue

Abstract

Arsenic poisoning is a serious challenge faced by many countries, which is caused by ingestion through drinking water. Lack of rapid analysis methods/tools is a reason for millions of people unaware about of the arsenic content, consume water from aquifers affected with arsenic contamination. A novel hardware-software combination (electronic tongue) has been developed that is economic, easy to use and highly portable and can be deployed for on-site analysis of water samples. The e-tongue makes use of anodic stripping voltammetry for arsenic detection and it was tested across a varying range of arsenic concentrations ranging from 5 ppb to 250 ppb. Copper interference studies also proved the proposed solution is unaffected by presence of copper in the sample being analysed for detection and estimation of arsenic. Further field samples collected from various sites in the 24 paraganas district of West Bengal state were analyzed and the results were validated with those produced by AAS. The proposed solution has a great potential for large-scale deployment to enable mass analysis of aquifers in the areas affected by arsenic contamination