Qualitative and quasi-quantitative monitoring of drinking water through the use of a smart electronic tongue

Abstract

Abstract. Monitoring the quality of drinking water is undoubtedly an issue of global concern. In this sense, the new analytical approaches that incorporate new technologies are without doubt relevant. The aim of this work is to present the evaluation of a smart electronic tongue device as an alternative for qualitative and quantitative monitoring of drinking water. For this, a smart electronic tongue used consisted of cross-sensitive polypyrrole sensor array, coupled to a multi-channel electronic system (multipotentiostat) based on PSoC technology controlled from a smartphone with a data acquisition and control app. This device was used in the monitoring of drinking water from the Sincelejo city aqueduct system and water samples collected and analyzed by the public health agency were used. The voltammetric measurements carried out with the smart electronic tongue showed cross-sensitivity of the polypyrrole sensor array, which allowed the discrimination of the samples through analysis of principal components by artificial neural networks. In addition, the records made with the smart electronic tongue allowed, through partial least square by artificial neural networks estimating the concentrations of some important analytes in the evaluation of the physicochemical quality of drinking water with R2 values higher than 0.70. The results allowed to conclude that the smart electronic tongue constitutes a valuable analytical tool that allows, in a single measure, to perform qualitative and quantitative chemical analysis, it is also a fast, portable method that can complement traditional analyzes.