A low-cost automated streaming potential measurement system.

Surface charge characterization is important in the design and testing of coatings and membranes for biological and industrial applications, but commercial zeta potential meters are expensive and difficult to adapt to a variety of membrane designs. We combined inexpensive off-the-shelf components, a test mount fabricated with a conventional rapid prototyping system, and software written using a no-cost integrated development environment to implement a low-cost, automated streaming potential meter. Software written in Visual C# managed a USB data acquisition and control pod to regulate the transmembrane pressure while simultaneously reading transmembrane voltages from a digital multimeter with 0.1-nV precision. The streaming potential was measured through a commercially available polyethersulfone membrane with repeatable results for transmembrane pressures between -15 and 15 kPa. The transmembrane voltages for each set of six pressures were linear, with R (2) values greater than 0.9995. The zeta potentials calculated from the measured streaming potentials are in agreement with previous results for the same commercial membrane previously reported in the literature. The material cost for the system is less than $4000.