Lab-on-a-chip tech promises revolution

FORT COLLINS – CSU Chemistry Professor Chuck Henry’s Advanced MicroLabs is working to bring cutting-edge monitoring and measuring technology to an array of activities including detecting toxins from munitions manufacturing facilities that have polluted water sources nationwide.

Known as lab-on-a-chip, Advanced MicroLabs’ technology is less than half the size of a business card and measures trace levels of compounds. Based in CSU’s Research Innovation Center, the company employs three full-time and five part-time workers.

In general, water sources are measured for toxins once every month or so. A sample is collected and sent to a lab for analysis, which can take weeks. By contrast, Advanced MicroLabs measurements are taken every 15 minutes and can be monitored online.

Henry, the CEO, co-founded Advanced MicroLabs along with Kenneth Ogan, Bob Kali, Doug Johnson and Philippe Dekleva in 2004. CSU owns the original patent, which is licensed by the company. It has three additional patents pending.

Advanced MicroLabs originally made medical diagnostic technology for patients suffering from diabetes and heart disease. After challenges in the health care market, the company shifted its focus to water-quality monitoring.

Today, its products are aimed at coal, natural gas and nuclear power plants that use water, as well as water-treatment operations.

Advanced MicroLabs recently received a $650,000 grant from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to build a portable device to monitor streams and rivers. The company will use the device to detect perchlorate, a chemical used in rocket fuel, flares, fireworks and explosives.

Perchlorate is found in drinking water of communities near munitions factories and can cause thyroid problems, disrupting growth and development.

Only a few companies can measure trace amounts of perchlorate, and none have online monitoring capabilities, Henry said. Online monitoring is important because officials need to know when to treat drinking water for perchlorate, whose amounts can vary depending on the time of year.

When officials detect rising perchlorate levels, they quickly can adjust their treatment methods, saving money, he said.

Perchlorate has been found in more than 4 percent of public water systems nationwide, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Lab-on-a-chip also measures metals such as cadmium, lead and mercury.

“Water contamination is a significant issue, but in terms of actual market size, it’s not a huge market,” Henry said.

So, the company also aims to play in the energy market with a device that measures chloride and sulfate levels in water that power plants use to run their turbines. The technology makes real-time measurements of low levels of the chemicals, which can cause costly corrosion to power plant infrastructure if untreated.

Henry compares the problem to hard water’s ability to destroy a showerhead.

“If you do that inside of a power plant, you can lose a $100 million turbine,” he said.

Advanced MicroLabs systems cost about $25,000. Power plant customers typically pay 22 cents for every dollar to deal with corrosion on the facility’s water treatment operations, but Advanced MicroLabs says it can reduce that cost to 14 cents.

A power plant can get a return on its investment in six months to one year, he said.

As promising as it all sounds, Advanced MicroLabs has not yet sold any of its water-monitoring products, Henry said. The company has completed research and development, but needs to raise more money to finish engineering.

“We’re at that classic chasm: We’re too far along to raise grant money, but not far enough along to have revenue from sales yet,” he said.

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