In Le Havre, connected mussels to detect water pollution

For two years, researchers from the University of Le Havre have been working on a project called iCaging. The objective: to develop sentinel and connected mussels capable of giving the alert in the event of water pollution. Each month, the researchers take the shells out of the port of Le Havre to study their behavior. Installed in cages, the molds are equipped with sensors to measure their opening distance.

The opening of the molluscs gives information on the quality of the water and in particular on the presence of pollutants. “The mussel has an opening and closing cycle which will depend on the luminosity, the tide, these are normal factors. But the opening cycle can also change due to pollutants, that’s what interests us”explains Julien Baudry, research engineer at the Litis laboratory.

VSThe aim of the work is to develop a pollution alert system: connected molds that would send messages if the level of pollution is too high. “The device measures the distance between the two valves which gives us an indication of the quality of the water. The next idea is to develop a pollution alert signal in the laboratory“, explains Frank Le Foll, director of the UMR of the SEBIO laboratory.

Ultimately, the researchers want to set up a start-up that would make this alert system available to different players. According to Frank Le Foll, this could be used in ports, for industrialists or environmental managers, but also in urban basins.