WaterMaker Solar: Solar-Powered Water Filtration to Enable Air Base Water Resiliency

Water resiliency is a Department of the Air Force (DAF)-wide strategy priority. Bases have Water Dashboards to track water vulnerabilities. The 2021 DAF Energy Resiliency specifically focuses on water resiliency. Though the DAF has historically focused on electrical energy assurance, it is increasingly recognizing the need to consider how water provides critical mission support. This new focus has been driven by a deeper understanding of DAF water rights, recent real-world instances of water impacting mission success, and growing water availability challenges that affect water quantity, quality, and access. For example, DAF bases now use Installation Water Dashboards to track water availability and risks to operations. Installations’ Crown Jewels Analysis (CJA) Tool performs criticality and dependency analyses to identify and prioritize assets that may cause mission impact if an enabling system service was denied to a given asset.  An opportunity exists for new tools and technologies that can help DAF installations better manage water risks and ensure resiliency. To address the challenges and DAF-wide requirements, GenPro Energy Solutions proposes to conduct SBIR Phase II research, development, testing & evaluation (RDT&E) project to modify and enhance its GenPro WaterMaker 2500 (GWM2500) water filtration tool to augment the base water utility system in case of natural disasters or occurrences that disrupt water filtration and production.  GenPro will conduct non-recurring engineering to develop new capabilities for the GWM2500, specifically to engineer new hardware so that it integrates into the base utility system in order to augment water filtration and to increase the effective filtration throughput to support more continuous use. The impact of this project on the DAF and the DoD will be to improve air base and installation water resiliency by introducing a solar-powered water filtration tool that operates without fuel or grid power and enables air base self-sufficiency and continuous air operations.