Award

The lack of potable water is widespread. The Army has portable seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) desalination systems, however they are bulky, truck portable, energy expensive, and too large a scale for small unit level or the individual soldier.There is a need for a small scale, man-portableSWRO units. One impediment to creating this is the energy demands for SWRO systems. Large scale systems have developed energy recovery devices to reclaim the energy in the SWRO waste, these systems do not scale down to a man portable unit. This proposal outlines an innovative method to recover the SWRO waste energy, keep the system small and light, and allow flexibility for a wide range of water conditions and outputs. Using lightweight materials and nano-composite thin film coatings to both lubricate and protect the system from high salinities we propose a small energy recovery device.The system is driven by wastewater and input seawater pressurized to RO levels with a motor that supplies the necessary power above what is recovered. The system size and weight allows for development of a man portable, adaptable, desalinization system.