Water Recover Patent awarded to Construction Engineering Research Laboratory team

U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center
Published Nov. 29, 2021
Creating an energy-efficient invention to recover clean water for Soldiers in austere environments proved worthy of US Patent 11,029,044, “High Volume Air Stream Water Recovery System,” awarded in June to the research team at the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center’s (ERDC) Construction and Engineering Research Laboratory (CERL) in Champaign, Illinois.
Using their combined 20 years of experience at the ERDC, CERL’s Jed Alvey and Dr. Martin Page and the Naval Undersea Warfare Center’s Axi Pagan-Vasquez sought to develop a capability to help address Soldiers’ needs for going longer without water resupply during Multi-Domain Operations (MDO.)

MDO describes how the U.S. Army, as part of the joint force, can counter and defeat near-peer adversaries capable of challenging the U.S. in air, land, maritime, space and cyberspace domains, in both competition and armed conflict.

“Water, fuel and ammo represent the top resupply demand signatures on the battlefield and resupply capabilities will be more limited in Multi-Domain Operations. Soldiers will need to go longer between resupply and use supplies more efficiently,” said Page , who is assigned as a research materials engineer and team lead for operational water research at CERL.

Page shared the idea for this new system that resulted from an interdisciplinary research collaboration between operational energy and operational water researchers to help solve water availability and time constraint challenges.

The concept was developed and is being tested at the ERDC CERL’s Forward Operating Base Laboratory.

How it works

As explained in the patent application, this novel water recovery system utilizes waste heat and a moving air stream which is collected from the diesel generators used for providing electricity. With the advantage of recovering water with minimal use of energy and without the need to move water through filtration devices, Soldiers and others can use it for recovery and reuse of water for a wide range of emergency back-up, environmental, industrial and mission-oriented purposes.

“The system efficiently extracts water vapor from waste materials like wastewater, brine, or sludge by accelerating evaporation with waste heat and then recapturing it with desiccant materials. The vapor is then extracted from the desiccant and condensed into an air stream, again with the help of waste heat, where it can more easily be condensed into water,” said Alvey, CERL’s Energy Branch Chief who is an expert in thermal and fluid systems.

Page explained that the invention “provides a new tool for generating water from air, or for recovering water from difficult-to-treat water sources such as the brines generated by reverse osmosis membranes during water production or water reuse activities, while using the waste heat from tactical generators for a productive purpose. This would allow every drop of fuel to do more work for the Soldier.”

Protecting Soldiers, water from air research

“Reusing water on the battlefield can reduce water resupply requirements, keeping Soldiers out of harm’s way. However, there are limits to current water reuse technology in terms of water recovery level and energy consumption. This system increases water recovery levels while minimizing energy consumption,” Alvey said.

“The prototype will be transitioned to the Contingency Basing Integration & Technology Evaluation Center (CBITEC) at Fort Leonard Wood for demonstration testing in the future,” Page shared, adding that that this concept is being integrated into the Mobile Ablution and Water Reuse System (MAWRS) to increase the water recovery for that system without significantly increasing fuel consumption.”

Additionally, Page and Alvey said their operational water and energy teams are working on a waste-heat-driven atmospheric water generator that use even more waste heat from diesel generators to harvest water from air to further offset fuel requirements. 

“Generation of water from air is a major capability gap for the Army and could help reduce water resupply requirements in multi-domain operations. Current AWG systems are fuel intensive. By using waste heat to offset those fuel requirements, we expect to develop a practical solution for our Soldiers,” Page said.

In fiscal year 2022, ERDC Office of Research and Technology Transfer leaders will recognize Alvey and Page with an award at the enterprise headquarters in Vicksburg, Mississippi.

For technical information, visit the patent application link: https://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&d=PALL&s1=11029044.PN