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The U.S. Army Deploys a New Generation of Water Purification Technology:Ultrafiltration Pretreatment for Portable Water Purification Unit
The United States Army is utilizing state-of-the-art membrane water purification technology to support highly mobile military operations and humanitarian missions. Mechanical Equipment Company Inc. (MECO), of Sugar Land, Texas, has designed a Lightweight Water Purifier (LWP) that can be easily transported to remote locations to produce safe drinking water from almost any available raw water, including highly-turbid surface water, brackish water and seawater. Additionally, the LWP is also capable of purifying water contaminated with nuclear, biological and chemical warfare agents.
The new LWP is light enough to be carried by four soldiers and simple enough for two operators to assemble and begin producing water in just 45 minutes from a water source such as a river, lake, pond, or ocean. The entire system can be transported in the cargo space of a HMMWV and by a single haul of a medium-lift utility or assault helicopter such as the UH-60 Black Hawk. In the past, desalination systems had been designed for conventional seawater salt concentrations of 35,000 ppm, however in the Middle East, the salinity is much higher. It is 45,000 ppm in the Arabian Gulf, and in "waterholes" in the desert it can reach 60,000 ppm. MECO specifically tests each LWP to verify that it meets this 60,000 ppm requirement, enabling the systems to treat any water, anywhere in the world.
The compact LWP unit will produce 125 gallons per hour (gph) from fresh or brackish water and 75 gph from seawater, sufficient production levels to support company/battalion-sized units in the field. The exact number of people that the LWP unit can sustain in the field is proportional to the water consumption scenario. For example, if the unit is used solely for drinking water, it will be able to support many more soldiers than if it is used for general purposes such as cooking, cleaning, showers, or laundry.
Evolution of Portable Water Treatment
Water filtration technology has evolved significantly since MECO began designing and manufacturing transportable water treatment systems for the U.S. military more than sixty years ago. In fact, the original thermal desalination systems used by the Marine Corps in the invasion of Iwo Jima employed MECO’s patented vapor compression technology.
The new LWP combines two types of membrane filtration: ultrafiltration (UF) membranes pretreat the water prior to processing by reverse osmosis (RO) membranes. This design replaces the Army’s previous generation of portable water processing equipment, which pretreated the RO feed water with multi-media filters (MMF) and disposable cartridge filters.
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