King Abdullah University for Science & Technology uses NanoSight Characterization System to Aid their Water Desalination & Reuse Research Programs

Salisbury, UK, 2nd November 2010: 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.”

To learn more about nanoparticle characterization using Nanoparticle Tracking Analysis, NTA, please visit the company website ( www.nanosight.com ) and register for the latest issue of NanoTrail, the company’s electronic newsletter.

About NanoSight
NanoSight Limited, of Salisbury, UK, provides unique nanoparticle characterization technology. “Nanoparticle Tracking Analysis” (NTA) detects and visualizes populations of nanoparticles in liquids down to 10nm (material dependent) and measures the size of each particle from direct observations of diffusion. This particle-by-particle methodology goes beyond traditional light scattering techniques such as Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS), or Photon Correlation Spectroscopy (PCS), in providing high-resolution particle size distributions. Additionally NanoSight measures concentration and validates all data with video of particles moving under Brownian motion.

This characterization information is highly informative in understanding the more complex suspensions in biological systems, hence its wide application in development of drug delivery systems, viral vaccines, the study of toxicology of nanoparticles and their environmental fate and in biomarker detection. This real-time data also provides insight into the kinetics of protein aggregation and other time-dependent phenomena in a quantitative manner, at deeply sub-micron sizes.

NanoSight has more than 250 systems installed worldwide with users including BASF, BP, GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, 3M Corp., Roche, Solvay and Unilever together with many universities and research institutes. There are currently 100+ third party papers citing NanoSight results, with this reference base growing very rapidly as NanoSight consolidates its key contribution to nanoparticle characterization. For more information, visit the NanoSight website ( www.nanosight.com ).

For further information
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