Mercury is a heavy metal that has been listed as the top ten groups of public health concern by the World Health Organization (WHO). Persistent exposure to mercury can cause serious illness, especially to early childhood development as well as harm to the environment through the disposal of untreated waste from industrial plant factories.

In this regard, to overcome the problem, Dr. Amir Syahir Bin Amir Hamzah from the Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Science, UPM has produced an innovation that can provide speed and efficiency to detect the presence of mercury ions in water sources, namely Mercury Smart Color Detector.

According to Dr. Amir, this innovation was developed to ensure the monitoring of mercury ions (II) in water sources without the need to bring water samples to the laboratory. Therefore, this innovation can help environmental officials and relevant government officials to monitor and analyze mercury ions (II).

The rapid development of the industry has led to an increase in mercury ions in environments that require continuous in-situ monitoring. Unfortunately, current methods used to determine the presence of mercury often require expensive equipment and sophisticated operations. Therefore, it is necessary to develop simple but effective and sensitive methods to monitor the level of mercury in our environment. This can be done through the color test of mercury ions (II) using gold nanoparticles that can be implemented at water source locations to provide rapid and effective analysis of mercury (II) ions. ”

Among the advantages of Mercury Smart Color Detector innovation compared to other technologies is that this innovation can detect mercury ions in about 10 minutes to complete. In addition, this technique is equipped with a smartphone-mounted fabrication space where it can be connected to a smartphone application that can act as an absorption reader to distinguish the colors produced by the system.

In addition, the advantage of this innovation is also that it is very cost-effective, fast and efficient in detecting mercury and user-friendly. Among the target consumers to use this innovation are environmental officials, government officials and companies involved in the detection and monitoring of pollutants in water sources.

A member of the group involved in the production of this innovation is Dr. Mohd Rashdan bin Saad, Dr. Asilah Tajudin and Nurfatini Idayu Busari. Innovation Mercury Smart Color Detector has won several awards including receiving the Gold Medal in the e-REKA exhibition held at UniMAP, 2018 and the Silver Medal at the International Invention, Innovation & Technology Exhibition (ITEX) 2019 exhibition in KLCC.

Prof. Madya Ts. Dr. Amir Syahir Bin Amir Hamzah
Faculty of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Science, UPM
Email: amirsyahir@upm.edu.my

Date of Input: 31/03/2020 | Updated: 26/11/2020 | asrizam