Atmocean Wave Powered Desalination

Atmocean aims to provide sustainable fresh water, food, and employment for coastal communities around the world using wave powered desalination.

There is an ever increasing water shortage developing around the world. From Sao Paulo to Cape Town, Mexico to LA, municipalities and rural communities are increasingly experiencing water shortages and water scarcity due to population growth and climate change. The main response is the installation of gas fired desalination plants in order to meet the rising demand for fresh water. Unfortunately, while working to meet global water demand for those that can afford it, emissions continue to go up, exacerbating climate change. 

Because Atmocean pumps seawater to shore, the desalination process requires no grid connection, operating exclusively off pressurized seawater. This means the system is off-grid, uses no diesel or gas powered electricity and therefore has no CO2 emissions, while able to be deployed in remote coastal desert lands. The working fluid is seawater and therefore poses no ecological risk from leaks. The offshore arrays create a de-facto Marine Protected Areas (MPA), thereby restoring ocean ecosystems by establishing nursery zones. If the fresh water is used for agriculture, the system is carbon negative as growing food in desert areas promotes CO2 uptake. Los Alamos National Laboratory (adjacent our home office in New Mexico) conducted a study in 2016 on implementing the Atmocean solution along 11,000 linear km of available coastline globally and found that new agriculture would offset 2 years of global aviation over a 50-year period. It goes to show the efficiency of carbon uptake, but also the scale of the global carbon problem.

Lastly, by generating a carbon negative economy that produces rural jobs, food, and water, we keep people from immigrating to cities and generate resilient rural communities thereby promoting healthy ecosystems. It is difficult to quantify the carbon emissions associated with frequent travel, city poverty, and the footprint of destabilized populations, but all are known to increase stress and vulnerability of people and communities. With Atmocean, we can strengthen and empower coastal areas around the world as we move towards sustainable solutions locally, globally.

The ability to capture wave energy and convert it into pressurized seawater has never been realized prior to Atmocean. There are significant challenges with variable and harsh ocean forces, corrosion, difficult operating environments, and costs. Atmocean has continually developed its patent pending technology to answer all of these questions culminating in an elegant and simple solution. With pressured seawater arriving on shore, existing technologies including land based aquaculture, reverse osmosis, and electrical power generation can be applied to any coastally based Atmocean system thereby realizing a new source of renewable energy for global coastal communities.

In order to have a marine pump operate in sea water with variable forces and at repetitions seen in the tens of thousands per day, extensive fluid dynamics and material science development has been undertaken by Atmocean and its research partner Sandia National Labs. Oceans represent one of the most severe conditions for technological systems to operate in on earth. By solving this challenge of harnessing ocean wave energy, the global research community will achieve a milestone in both renewable energy and the sciences used to realize this system.

Over the next 12 months, Atmocean intends to conduct its final two field tests at the College of North Atlantic test site as well as a full component review by Teledyne engineering. These milestones will ensure Atmocean finishes with development and is ready for initial commercial deployment. Concurrently, Atmocean is working with Chilean partners to finalize the location, business structure, and funding of the initial commercial system which can be rolled out the following year.

The full scale trial unit will produce 100,000 gallons (378.8 cubic meters or 1,000 kg) per day of fresh water, applied to drip-irrigate tomato cropland will produce one kg tomatoes with 214 liters fresh water (source: Institute of Mechanical Engineers). On 2 crops per year, this unit produces 9,345 kg tomatoes on .13 hectares cropland. Being modular and not needing electricity, this wave driven R/O + agri unit can be widely installed in arid coastal ecosystems, providing food, water, and jobs.

Our partner company REDE (www.rede.cl) in Chile will be our operational manager for the Chilean market. Their network will ensure the sustainable growth and implementation of the Atmocean technology along the Chilean coast. Atmocean is in discussions with other operators in Perú, Colombia, and South Africa which are ideal secondary target markets we aim to move into following initial commercialization in Chile.

Currently, the only people involved are developers, local manufactures and local communities that benefit from temporary jobs in the area ranging from divers, to fishermen, local food and lodging arrangements. Many of these positions will become permanent once commercial systems are implemented.

100,000 gal/day=138,257 m3 per year. 214 liters water/kg tomatoes=646 tons tomatoes per year. Avg price $300/ton is $193,818 per year from one array. Average salary in Chile is $10,332 per year, supplying 18.8 households of 4. Rural income is likely to satisfy roughly twice this number or 40 households per system. Assuming doubling of new systems per year, in 3 years this supports 160 farming families. Not included are 1-2 families per ocean system as well as 20 contractual jobs annually. Production of the fully commercial system will generate ~50 temporary jobs and 200 indirect jobs from economic activity.

Mr. Kithil is inventor of the wave-energy system and is CEO of Atmocean. Kithil has a M.S.B.A. in Economics from U.Denver and successfully founded six startups.Philip Fullam, Chief Engineerobtained his engineering degree from Stevens Institute of Technology. He has 20+ years experience in materials engineering, manufacturing process engineering, CAD/CAM. Christopher White, COO,holds a MSc from the U.Amsterdam in Oceanography. Mr. White has lived in Latin America for the past three years, obtaining the first ever marine energy permits from the Peruvian Navy, overseeing fabrication, testing, and business development between Lima and Santiago.

We will license our technology to local management groups such as REDE. At 5% royalty, and doubling new systems each year, by 2030 our licensees are operating 4,000 systems and our net income grows to $560,000.

Atmocean has relied on a dedicated small group of angel investors, New Mexico small business grants and a few other development grants. Although the funding will be instrumental in funding our next test, the exposure and connections obtained through Solve would ideally result in sufficient support to finish testing and bring the Atmocean system to a commercial ready level.

Funding remains a key barrier to bringing this technology to market. Additionally, having an depth technical engineering review would be instrumental. Currently, this step in the development pathway is set to be Teledyne engineering. Atmocean is open to working with other partners that meet the technical needs of this project should they become available.