Dronaqua

Forever chemicals.
Found. Mapped. Removed.

Dronaqua is a swarm of solar-powered floating drones that detect PFOS in urban waterways, adsorb it with biochar and map exactly where it was.

See how it works Read our story
Rendered Dronaqua drone floating on water: a solar panel over an electronics bay, on an orange float ring
1.6 nM
PFOS detection target, straight from the water
<1.5%
PFAS remaining after carbon adsorption
S$600
to S$800 per drone. Add coverage, not infrastructure

The problem

PFAS don't break down.
Testing for them hasn't changed in decades.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances enter waterways through consumer goods, runoff and waste, then persist and accumulate, with links to cancer and hormone disruption. Finding them still means carrying a bottle to a central lab and waiting hours or days for a single point reading. Hotspots go unmapped, and treatment at scale means heat or chemicals that leave their own byproducts.

How it works

One drone. One pass.
Detect, treat, map.

Every drone carries the whole pipeline. A swarm covers a water body the way a single lab sample never could.

01

Detect

A PFOS-selective molecularly imprinted polymer sensor on screen-printed electrodes, read by a mini-potentiostat, measures PFOS at environmentally relevant levels straight from the water. Sensor sourcing with Metrohm.

02

Treat

An onboard biochar cartridge adsorbs PFOS from the sampled water. Biochar instead of heat or chemicals: cheap, effective, and no harmful byproducts.

03

Map

Every reading is GPS-tagged and timestamped, relayed drone to drone over an ESP32 mesh to a Raspberry Pi control station, and rendered as a live concentration heatmap.

CAD model of the Dronaqua drone: solar panel on top, translucent electronics housing, black chassis with legs, and an orange float ring with two side wheels

The drone

Small. Modular.
Built from parts you can order.

Designed in CAD and assembled by hand. Keeping each unit cheap is the whole idea.

  • PowerSolar panel, charge controller and voltage regulator; battery-backed for cloud cover
  • SensingMIP on screen-printed electrode, mini-potentiostat readout
  • TreatmentReplaceable biochar adsorption cartridge
  • Compute and commsESP32 for motor control and mesh radio, GPS module, Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W control station
  • Build costS$600 to 800 per unit at prototype volumes: solar about S$80, motors about S$100, electronics about S$70, materials S$100 to 150, plus sensor
  • MaterialsBiodegradable float, propeller and frame where possible
Simulated PFAS concentration heatmap over a 20 by 20 metre area, with several red hotspots on a pale grid

Simulation and control station

From readings to a map you can act on.

Before the first drone touched water, we built the swarm simulation, the mesh, and the control-station software that turns readings into a concentration map.

The output shown is simulated data for a 20 m by 20 m sampling area. The hotspots are where a crew would be sent first. The same pipeline becomes DronaData, a growing, timestamped record of PFOS levels across catchments that doesn't exist anywhere today.

Compared

Lab sampling and centralised treatment, versus a swarm.

CriteriaExisting methodsDronaqua
DetectionHigh accuracy, but solid-phase extraction and direct injection are localised and lab-basedHigh, scalable via the drone network; on-site electrochemical sensing targets PFOS down to 1.6 nM
TreatmentModerate; high heat and strong chemicals remediate PFAS but produce other harmful byproductsHigh; carbon adsorption can bring PFAS in contaminated samples to under 1.5% of the original
CostHigh; fixed infrastructure and per-sample lab feesLow; S$600 to 800 per drone, solar-powered, no transport
Deployment speedSlow; fixed infrastructure, 4 h or more per resultNear-immediate; drones cover large areas quickly over the mesh
Environmental impactChemical byproducts and physical waste from heating; disposal problemsMinimal; solar energy, biodegradable components
ScalabilityLimited to a fixed number of samplesHighly scalable; add drones, and the dataset improves with every deployment

Where it's weaker: not every water body is accessible to a floating drone, and data collection stops in extreme weather. Labs remain the confirmation step for regulatory readings.

Our story

What four students did in a year.

The gap

A monitoring problem nobody was funding

While interning with PUB and in NUS water labs, Belle saw that urban PFAS sampling was periodic, slow and centralised. Jacob, after years of water and sustainability work at UWCSEA, wanted to build rather than campaign. Vikram, Jacob, Belle and Alex founded Dronaqua to close it.

Recognition

Conrad Challenge Alternate Finalists

Our PFAS detection and remediation concept was recognised for feasibility and impact, and Dronaqua was named an Alternate Finalist in the Conrad Challenge. We did not travel to Houston for the Innovation Summit.

Funding

Youth innovation grants secured

GoMakeADifference, the IB Global Youth Action Fund, the Awesome Foundation and others funded component purchases for R&D and prototyping. Most of the drone's parts have been bought.

Community

United Water Conference 2025

Co-hosted by Vikram, Jacob and Belle at UWCSEA, with sessions on pollutants, urban catchments and data-driven remediation, and industry professionals brought in through the alumni network.

Partners

PUB, NUS, NTU, A*STAR and Metrohm

Method guidance from university researchers, instrumentation support from Metrohm, and interest from PUB's leadership in supporting patent applications and scaling nationally. The partnerships also open access to restricted catchment areas.

12 May 2025

Incorporated in Singapore

Dronaqua is a registered Singapore business (UEN 53503874K), with a patent on the integrated detect-map-treat architecture in progress.

“Even though we’re still in school, we’ve built drones that can actually make a difference in cleaning and protecting our environment.”

The Dronaqua team, in Dunia, January 2026

Team

Four people. Four disciplines.

Vikram Goel

Co-founder and director, systems and mechanical design Dronaqua taught me that the fastest way to understand something is to build it. Drone design, systems integration and assembly; co-hosted the United Water Conference.

Jacob Wang

Co-founder, product and partnerships Dronaqua’s existence is a reminder to me every day that we can accomplish something that hasn’t been done before, in any field, at any age. Website, CAD modelling, outreach and fundraising.

Belle Zhou

Co-founder, PFAS research and outreach PFAS contamination is one of the most urgent but overlooked environmental issues we face today, because it has the potential to affect everyone, everywhere. University-lab PFAS research experience; scientific expertise, lab access and partner relationships.

Alex Cho

Software, simulation and comms Data is most powerful when it’s mapped, timestamped, and actionable. Swarm simulation, mesh networking and the control-station software.

What’s next

From Singapore pilots
to a regional platform.

Partners and supporters

PUB, Singapore’s National Water AgencyNational University of SingaporeNanyang Technological UniversityA*STAR IMREMetrohmUWCSEAConrad ChallengeGoMakeADifference