Water Harvesting from Air Military and Soldiers

A2WH.COM LLC 205-928-3702 EMail

A2WH Air to Water harvest device (http://A2WH.com)

A2WH allows water to be produced close to the point of consumption which minimizes the supply line. A2WH is unique in it’s ability to prevent produce water from air and yet act like a normal purifier when source water is available. A2WH can dramatically reduce the number of delivery trucks traversing risky battlefield conditions while increasing safety and reliability of the water supply.

A2WH (Air to Water Harvest) technology extracts the humidity in air and converts it into liquid water. A2WH is a new generation of atmospheric water generator device AWG) which are also known as water maker devices (WM) and Water Air Extraction Devices (WAED). A2WH uses a revolutionary patent pending design that provides special characteristics that make it ideal for large scale deployment in situations where historic designs would be prohibitively expensive.

Minimize supply line and logistics by producing water close to the point of deployment.
Minimize volume of material that must be deployed.
Ideally suited to enable rapid force projection and deployment.
Easy to pick up and move with the action.
Minimize risk from surface water contamination.
Allow deployment when no water is available.
Minimize delivery costs.
Minimize risk to logistics drivers operating behind lines.

There are some landscapes where a person can walk for days without seeing any water let alone any drinkable water. The military
regularly deploys with water purifiers such as the 2000 pound LWP (Light Weight Water Purifiers) but they all have a limitation of a needing source water to function effectively. This means that water purifiers have to be set up where there is a source of water such as a lake or ocean and then the water after being purified has to be carried quite often by truck to the soldiers who need it. There is a high cost in both people and fuel for water delivery and there is always a risk of the delivery drivers getting captured or injured while driving between the forward bases and the point of water purification.

How it works

Man has been producing air from water for thousands of years. Every time we set a cold glass out on a hot day water will bead up on the exterior and ultimately runs off and makes wet ring on the table. What is really happening is the cold glass lowers the temperature of the air it is touching causing that air to cool sufficiently that it reaches it’s dew point which allows the water in the air to condense onto the glass.The same process has been at work when a sheet of water has condensed on the windshield of a car after a cool evening or with the morning dew.

It is possible to scale this process up to produce quite a bit of water for use by humans but the historical problem is that it produced relatively little water for the energy required. The other problem is that producing a ready source of cold has been expensive and not very mobile.

A2WH uses techniques invented in the 1800’s by Robert Sterling that allow us to run small motors based on a temperature difference. A2WH has produced our own design for which we have 6 patents pending but they still use the same underlying physics principles. These motors are combined to power special air pumps that allow us to cool the air enough to reach the dew point. The difference is that we can cool enough air to produce a substantial amount of water using relatively small amounts of energy.

Differences between military A2WH and Civilian A2WH

The difference is that the civilian version of A2WH utilizes Solar energy either in the form of electricity or solar thermal heat to power the water production process. The Military version must be optimized to operate in a broader range of conditions with rapid deployment regardless of climate and weather. The Military version is designed to operate from power supplied by a tactical quiet generator with some versions that directly burn JP8 fuel. It is also designed to be tough enough to survive multiple air drops without damage and to fit into standard military shipping containers. As much as possible the system is designed to operate directly from the back a Humvee or flatbed truck.

The military units are designed to operate in a wider range of temperatures from -10F up through 100F and to work in to withstand a broader range of environmental contaminants. The Military version has a 3 stage filtration system with filtration values as high as MERV16 and is designed to allow more field expedient repairs than the civil models where ordering parts is normally a planned activity.

Individual & Unit Sized A2WH Units

Soldiers are dispatched in the some of the hottest parts of the world where they must operate for days at high levels of physical exertion. As a result they have abnormally high water requirements. In addition these soldiers are drawn from all around the country so many of them are not physically acclimated to the heat which means they may need even more water.

These soldiers normally have good supplies of water from their supply train and they generally carry enough to last at least ½ day but things can and will go wrong such as when their supply lines are temporarily compromised or they are out of touch and the supply can’t find them.They can’t carry a lot more weight in water so they carry some pretty good filters but when they are operating in the extreme desert they may not be able to find any water or when they enemy may have intentionally poisoned the surface water even their good filters may not be good enough.

So the question becomes how do you equip the mobile individual soldiers so that if they do get cut off from fresh water supplies they can survive for a week or more in the hottest, driest most forbidding areas of the world.

Man portable units are feasible in some climates however there are serious limitations in desert climates. It can require over 20,000 cubic foot of air to produce a single gallon and this volume of air is not conducive for operation while being carried by individual users since it requires several hundred CFM per minute. A2WH is considering the implementation of a man portable system that runs directly from JP8 fuel widely used in the Army this unit will be designed to produce 2 to 8 gallons of water per gallon of input fuel when ran at night depending on local humidity and temperatures and in most areas it will be able to exceed 4 gallons per day while also providing cooling air conditioning for a small tent.

This solution driven by a need to produce at least minimal water for survival conditions in situations where there is no source water available or the when the source water may be so contaminated that it is simply too risky to attempt purification using any strategy. An ideal buyer of this is U.S. military people working in the Iraq desert who would be in serious trouble if water was cut off for more than a few days.

Possession of these units represents substantial tactical advantage. They will dramatically reduced dependency on the supply train and mitigate the effect when the supply lines are temporarily compromised.The soldiers already carry water purification tablets but they only work in some conditions and in many instance there is either no water available to purify or the water is so contaminated with salt and metals that it can not be purified by gear the soldier is carrying.

A soldier who is excessively thirsty can not focus on their job. As a result their fighting effectiveness goes down rapidly. This unit is not intended to be the soldier’s primary water source but it will provide a sufficient amount of water to keep the soldier going for several days if the need arises.This is the only unit which is capable of producing water for the soldier to drink while they are walking across the desert.

These units will start in unit sized models and will be scaled down to individual sizes on request from an appropriate military sponsor. There are existing water from air systems but they require substantial power. Our original intent was to make these solar thermal powered however our feedback from the US Army was a strong preference for a unit which operates from JP8 and can operate at night.

In the military versions we will use high quality air filtration units of HEPA quality or better to remove any contaminants from the input air to ensure that even if the local environment is compromised the produced water is still pure. The goal would be that any air the soldier can safely breathe without full gas gear will produce water that is safe to drink. In addition the military units may also include a small ozone generator that continually sterilizes the produced water to prevent any bacteria or virus growth.

Contact us for more information

Call 205-928-3702. or Send our sales department an email.

This discussion contains forward looking statements which are based on current expectations and differences can be expected. All statements and expressions are the opinion of management of A2WH and are not meant to be either investment advice or a solicitation or recommendation to buy, sell, or hold securities. Many of these statements are based on sound economic reasoning, however actual response of the economy is heavily influenced by politics and large business and so the outcome could end up substantially different.