Man Portable Water Purification System

In today's military, Marines must be highly mobile and carry all necessary equipment and supplies with them. A major limitation to mobility is the need to carry fresh water. An individual Marine must carry 12 to 24 pounds of water for each day they will be in the field without re-supply. It would be far better to be able to purify locally-available water, but no technology exists that will allow Marines on the battlefield to purify water in every environment. Existing, commercially-available water purification devices can readily handle large particles, bacteria, protozoan cysts and viruses, but currently there are no man portable systems for purifying brackish or salt water. In this proposal TDA Research, Inc. (TDA) will build a portable water purification system that includes desalination. The overall Phase I work plan is to build a prototype system, and then test its desalination capacity. From this prototype system we will be able to identify the advantage of desalination process and address the problems. We will do an engineering analysis to analyze the cost and performance of the system and allow us to design and build improved systems in Phase II.