LYNNTECH INC. — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: A20-062

Description

Often our warfighters are placed in environments without local water sources. This leads to significant logistical burdens of shipping water. Furthermore, the dismounted soldier, when on foot for several days at a time, is required to pack in several liters of water for each mission day, preventing him from carrying mission critical equipment. In summary, the lack of water significantly limits our military’s CONOPs in many situations.       The air we breathe contains a significant amount of water in the form of water vapor. If there was a feasible way to extract this water into usable drinking quantities, it would significantly reduce the military’s logistical burden and extend CONOPs. Although there are several commercial technologies which extract water from the air, they are too heavy, too large and require excessive amounts of energy to assist the dismounted soldier. Also, recent developments in solar AWE require large areas & only operate in daylight thus not feasible for mission CONOPs.       Lynntech proposes the development of an innovative system to perform Atmospheric Water Harvesting (AWH). This system utilizes a Combined Heat and Power (CH&P) approach, to maximize the useful energy recovery of the military’s logistical fuel, JP8. Employing a miniaturized burner, high temperature exhaust is used to create electrical power for air movers via thermo-electric generators (TEG). The lower temperature waste heat is then used to thermally regenerate sorbent coated HX modules, thus releasing, condensing and purifying the previously captured water, while keeping the JP8 exhaust and water fluidically isolated. Two sorbent-coated HX modules will be fluidically alternated to enable semi-continuous water production, similar to existing Temperature Swing Adsorption (TSA) systems.