Installation and training of a NanoSight
LM20 nanoparticle characterization system has been completed at the prestigious
King Abdullah University of Science and Technology located 80km north of Saudi
Arabia’s second largest city, Jeddah.
The Water Desalination & Reuse Research Centre is part of King Abdullah
University for Science & Technology, located at Thuwal beside Jeddah city
in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The mission for the Centre is to contribute
research and development toward the integrated and sustainable exploitation
of impaired-quality drinking water sources with a minimization of energy use,
chemical use, waste residuals, environmental impact and carbon footprint. Nanoparticle
size and count is vital to these research activities and the Division has selected
the NanoSight LM20 employing nanoparticle tracking analysis, NTA, to aid their
research.
Ahmed Kasmi of the Water Desalination & Reuse Research Centre at KAUST uses the NanoSight LM20
The Laboratory Manager is Dr. Faisal Wali. He describes what is important for
the research activity: “Our problem is colloidal fouling. This is because
it causes interruption in the membrane processes. Researchers are looking for
different possibilities to avoid particle contamination prior to their direct
interaction with membranes. To get around this challenge, the correct and accurate
detection of the nanoparticles in different kinds of water is required. The
Water Desalination and Reuse Centre consider this is very important to explore
in the future.”
He continues: “The Centre seeks to study the treated sea water after
using different types of membranes. The data collected using the NanoSight LM20
will provide a guide to understand on how membranes affect the removal of nanoparticles
and get more information on what is in our sea water.”
“As well as using NanoSight’s LM20 system, the Centre is using
a variety of other established particle characterization techniques such as
Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS) and NIBS (non-invasive back scatter) technology.
However, each has deficiencies in terms of parameters such as sample preparation
and speed of use. NanoSight has the unique advantage of providing particle sizing
and counting in real time, recorded in a video file which may be used for further
calculations. Because we are able to visualize the sample, we have more confidence
in our results. Individual particle tracking enables a much better peak resolution
than DLS so making it better suited to the study of well-treated water. It gives
an approximate particle concentration while letting us see bacterial contamination
easily as “swimming” particles.”