Edinburgh Napier University

  The detection of waterborne pathogens mainly relies on sample processing. This process concentrates large volume of water to very small volume that can be used under microscopes. The current approved concentration techniques are slow, very expensive, time-consuming and often results in low recovery rates of pathogens. This research explores the use of high frequency sonication which is attached to two different types of filters to improve the recovery rate and work towards automated filtration/elution systems. Both systems were designed and tested with latex beads and live Cryptosporidium parvum oocysts.
Results show that the recovery rate has improved by 22% on average when the ultrasonic transducer was used for the beads tests. Also, both systems show higher recovery rates with the use of megasonic energy; about 18% for the tangential flow filtration system and about 12% for the dead-end filtration system.