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Shortly after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, a coalition led by the Office of Naval Research’s Expeditionary Maneuver Warfare and Combating Terrorism Science and Technology Department (Code 30) brought two state-of-the-art expeditionary unit water purification (EUWP) systems to Mississippi for the purpose of providing emergency water for Biloxi Regional Medical Center and the Port of Pascagoula. Representatives from ONR; the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR); Army Tank Automotive Research, Development, and Engineering Center (TARDEC); and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) helped ensure that potable water was available until local service could be restored.
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| Code 30 at ONR has been managing the EUWP program, including the effort to stimulate advances in water purification technology. |
The EUWP system combines for the first time several technological advances, including new reverse osmosis (RO) membrane materials, energy recovery technology, and an assortment of other components specifically designed to increase efficiency of operation. It is intended to showcase technological innovations that can be used to provide clean, affordable drinking water to military units in the field, civilians in disaster recovery areas, and any group of people that is faced with water shortages or contaminated water supplies.
The EUWP consists of two units— one for ultrafiltration (UF) and another for RO—that can produce up to 100,000 gallons of potable water per day from seawater, and more than 200,000 gallons from fresh water. The two units, powered by a 60-kW generator, each weigh approximately 15,000 pounds and are mounted on skids 20 feet long, 8 feet wide, and 8 feet high, which can be transported by air in a C-130 or larger aircraft. With a focus on expeditionary needs, the units were designed to operate in most environments, including blowing sand, dust, rain, and air temperatures from 32 to 120 degrees Fahrenheit (0 to 50 degrees Celsius).
The EUWP features a 270-gallon-per-minute Koch UF system, an 80-gallon-per-minute RO system with a unique combination of brackish and seawater Dow FILMTEC membranes, and an Energy Recovery Inc. pressure exchanger to reduce power consumption. In accordance with EPA standards, it is designed to produce 100,000 gallons of drinking water from seawater daily.
The units performed brilliantly on the mix of Gulf of Mexico and river water off of the pier behind the Hard Rock Casino in Biloxi and at a pier at the Port of Pascagoula. The water’s turbidity ranged from 10 to 20 nephelometric turbidity units, with total dissolved solids from 17,000 to 30,000 parts per million.
From startup on Sept. 12 until Hurricane Rita forced operations to higher ground on Sept. 24, the unit in Biloxi delivered 686,000 gallons of potable disinfected water to the hospital. The UF proved to be excellent pretreatment for the RO, as it showed no decline in performance during its two weeks of operation and required cleaning only twice during that time. Staff members at the Biloxi Regional Medical Center were impressed with the system and were even heard to comment that the water had never been better. The EUWP systems also demonstrated their low power-consumption rates.
The UF unit used 2 kWh per 1,000 gallons—including intake and distribution pumping— and the RO unit used 7.5 kWh per 1,000 gallons. After Hurricane Rita blew through, the EUWP was redeployed to the rear parking lot of the Biloxi Regional Medical Center and began treating city water with only the UF system and supplemental chlorination until the city of Biloxi’s own water system was ready for continuous production on Sept. 26.
The EUWP program commenced in February 2003 (FY 2003) in response to a congressional funding initiative championed by Sen. Pete V. Domenici (Rep.-NM). Code 30 at ONR has been managing the EUWP program and is actively engaged in the dual-use (relevant for both the military and civilian communities) effort to stimulate discovery and invention in science and technology to advance well beyond the current state of the art in water reclamation, purification, energy, and distribution technologies. The highly transportable system is geared toward meeting the needs of expeditionary forces in the field, but the space-saving and energy-efficient technology it uses can easily be transferred for use in ships (such as aircraft carriers) or for civilian purification systems (such as for homeland defense).
The EUWP program was established with the intent to achieve two principal goals: 1.) to stimulate discovery and invention in science and technology to push well beyond the present state of the art in water reclamation, purification, energy, and distribution technologies, and 2.) to verify and validate the utility of emerging state-of-the-art science and technology in water purification systems for the benefit of both the military community and the federal and civilian communities, in keeping with dual-use management objectives. To achieve the foregoing mission goals, the EUWP program has pursued two major thrusts. The first aspect is summed up in the mission of the Science and Technology Integrated Program Team (IPT): to identify promising initiatives in the academic and commercial communities and financially stimulate these initiatives as may be needed, and, to the greatest degree possible, to canvas for both domestic and international initiatives. The second aspect is summed up in the mission of the Generation I EUWP Demonstrator IPT: to develop a demonstrator using the US Army tactical water purification system design as a baseline; to design the system to be C-130 military aircraft transportable and capable of purifying 100,000 gallons of water per day; and, to the greatest degree possible, to design the system in a manner to permit the exchange of component parts in order to verify and validate the benefit of new technology via “technology insertion,” thereby enabling its use as a research and analysis tool.
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The ONR EUWP program office has enjoined the services of a significant number of military and federal agency personnel—US Army TARDEC, US Navy’s Naval Sea Systems Command, Department of the Interior, BOR, EPA, and National Aeronautics and Space Administration, as well as those of universities and US and European commercial firms. The EUWP program has been organized into five basic IPTs—Science and Technology IPT, Generation I Demonstrator IPT, Tularosa Basin National Desalination Research Facility Demonstration IPT, Generation II Demonstrator IPT, and a Requirements IPT, each chaired or co-chaired with representation from among the organizations.
The difference between the Generation I Demonstrator IPT and the Generation II Demonstrator IPT is that the Generation I goal was to be capable of purifying 100,000 gallons of water per day from seawater or a brackish source. Generation II is increasing that goal to 300,000 gallons of water per day.
The EUWP program has uses beyond the support of expeditionary requirements. For example, in addition to studying, analyzing, and validating the merit of emerging science and technology, the design and technology of the Generation I Demonstrator is being studied and analyzed to support both disaster relief and homeland security management scenarios.
Additionally, the high-risk, high-payoff science and advanced technology aspects of the EUWP program may eventually lead to a reduction in the domestic cost per gallon to desalinate water as well as provide other alternative solutions to conserve and protect this vital resource.
MAJ. ALAN STOCKS is the Logistics Thrust Program Officer (Code 30), ONR.
OW - March/April 2006 |
