Water monitoring · Intelligent Material
What's in the water?
Legionella in a cooling tower, slime in a hotel ice machine, a failing filter under a coffee bar, bacteria in a hot tub. Today each is checked by a sample sent to a lab, with answers days later. Our water platform is built to test continuously instead: a reader on the line, Intelligent Material crystal cartridges and infrared spectroscopy, with results on a phone and no one needed to interpret them.
Real-time water quality
Why wait a year to learn what you drank?
Most people learn about their water from a utility report once a year. Our water-monitoring platform is built on proprietary advanced-material technologies, to test water in real time and continuously, and to send the result online automatically, without relying on an operator to interpret it.
What's in the water
Six ways water gets contaminated.
Contaminated water is tied to millions of deaths worldwide every year, and the U.S. is not exempt: aging pipes, untested aquifers and runoff reach the tap. These are the threats the platform is built to watch.
The technology · both ours
Infrared light for chemistry. Crystals for biology.
The platform combines two optical technologies from Intelligent Material. Infrared spectroscopy reads the chemical fingerprints of molecules with no reagent at all. Upconverting crystals light up bacteria and other biological targets with a color that does not exist in nature, so there is no background to fight.
Every molecule has a fingerprint
Infrared light is absorbed by the vibrations and rotations of molecules. A tunable infrared laser scans the water and reads which wavelengths are missing: the unique fingerprints of chemical and biomolecular contaminants. See Spectroscopy →
A color nature does not make
Patented Intelligent Material crystals convert invisible infrared laser light into higher-energy visible light. Water, sediment and biofilm cannot do that, so detection runs without background noise and with higher sensitivity. Bound to antibodies, the crystals flag Legionella and other microbes.
The product family
From a pocket device to an industrial line.
One detection platform, packaged for each market: consumers and homes, regulated and unregulated commercial sites, and industrial plants. Modular cartridges let each location test for the hazards that matter there.
Pocket tester
For on-the-go use: up to three different assays in five minutes, for the non-regulated consumer and residential market.
3 assays · 5 minutesAutomated site monitor
Automated monitoring for regulated or non-regulated sites such as cooling towers, health-care and hospitality facilities, with rapid, quantitative results.
Towers · hospitals · hotelsMobile site monitor
The same components, features and benefits as the site monitor, in a portable unit that moves between sites.
Same reader, on the moveIndustrial in-line device
Automated and modular, for regulated and non-regulated industrial water, designed to report on up to 250 contaminants within 25 minutes of testing.
Up to 250 contaminants · 25 minProduct capabilities are design specifications.
At home
Your tap, on your phone.
A compact home unit samples the household supply automatically, without interrupting the water, and reports through an app. Cartridges are chosen for the local risks: lead in an old city, fracking chemicals near a gas field, Legionella in a large building.
The problem
By the time the lab calls, the water has moved on.
Water that sits warm, recirculates or makes mist can grow bacteria fast. Yet most facilities test it the slow way: someone fills a bottle, ships it, and a lab grows the bacteria on a plate. For Legionella that culture typically takes days to more than a week.
- Day 0Someone remembers to take a sample.
- Day 1Shipped cold to a lab.
- Days 2–10Bacteria grown on plates and counted.
- Day 10+A report arrives. The water it describes is long gone.
- AutomaticThe reader draws its own sample on a schedule.
- ~30 minConcentrate, bind crystal reporters, read at 980 nm.
- InstantlyA number on a dashboard, with the trend.
- On a riseAn alert, so the operator can disinfect and confirm by lab.
Concept. The inline reader would screen and trend; regulated compliance testing would still use approved laboratory methods.
Concept · automated inline readers
A smoke detector for water.
The automated site monitor taken further: a reader plumbed into the places where bacteria thrive, testing on its own schedule with crystal cartridges. Pick a site to see where it would connect, what it would look for and how often it would test.
Cooling towers
Warm, aerated recirculating water is ideal for Legionella, and the tower spreads it as mist over a whole neighborhood. Most Legionnaires' disease outbreaks traced to a source are linked to building water systems, cooling towers among them.
Ice machines
Ice is food, but the machine is a dark, damp box that is cleaned on a schedule, not on evidence. Bacteria and slime can build up in the water reservoir and the ice bin between cleanings.
Under the sink
Chains filter their water for coffee, soda and ice, then change the filter by the calendar. An inline reader shows when the water after the filter actually changes, at every store, on one dashboard.
Hot tubs and spas
Warm water, jets that make aerosols, and bathers. Hot tubs are a classic source of Legionella and of Pseudomonas skin infections. Today's strips check chlorine, not the bugs.
Concept. Targets are design goals for cartridges, not existing assays.
How it works
Concentrate, label, read in the dark.
Bacteria in clean water are rare, so the reader first pushes a measured volume through a small filter to collect them. Antibodies or gene probes on crystal reporters then latch onto the target. A near-infrared laser reads the crystals; the water, the filter and the biofilm do not glow at that wavelength, so even a few captured cells give a clean signal.
- 1 · SampleDraw and concentrateA valve opens; liters of water pass a capture filter.
- 2 · LabelCrystal reporters bindDried reagents in the cartridge are rehydrated and flow over the filter.
- 3 · Read980 nm, time-gatedThe reader measures the glow of the bound crystals only.
- 4 · ReportCloud and alertsThe number and trend go to the dashboard; the cartridge advances.
Try it · why continuous matters
Catch the rise, not the outbreak.
A cooling tower's disinfectant feed fails over a weekend. Monthly grab samples and an inline reader see the same water very differently.
Illustration with invented data.
The business model
Like a water filter: the reader stays, the cartridge changes.
A facility installs one reader per water system and subscribes to cartridges and monitoring. Chains see every location on one map; insurers and inspectors get a time-stamped record instead of a clipboard.
One reader per system
Plumbed in like a water softener, with power and a network connection.
Monthly cartridge
A carousel of single-use crystal tests, swapped in seconds by staff.
Dashboard and alerts
Every site, every test, with the record a water-management plan needs.
Partners wanted
Clean water you can prove, every hour.
We are looking for water-treatment companies, facility managers, hotel, restaurant and spa operators and equipment makers to build the inline reader with us.
All diagnostics programs
One reporter. People, animals and the environment.
See the overview and readiness map →Intelligent Material Solutions invents the crystals and holds the intellectual property; NovaVera Corp. makes and sells them under an exclusive license. The field-proven lateral-flow tests are for research use only. Everything marked in development or concept is not a cleared medical, veterinary or environmental test; any product would need validation and, where required, regulatory clearance.
