Fresh drinking water from the ocean: Delmarva company harnesses waves to make it happen

More than four months after Hurricane Maria devastated the Caribbean islands, about 20 percent of Puerto Rico remained without access to running water.

But what if there were a way to remove the salt from ocean water surrounding the island and provide clean drinking water to Puerto Ricans in need — without using electricity?

That is exactly what Maryland-based marine contracting company Murtech Inc. aims to do with a prototype it has been testing off the coast of Delaware.

The small, veteran-owned business is harnessing the power of ocean waves to deliver a new source of freshwater that company officials hope could be used in emergencies — and one day even augment or replace traditional municipal water services in coastal communities.

“We hope that we’re going to get the timing where there’s a need and we have a solution coming together,” said Murtech President and Founder Robert Murtha. “We hope that this is going to be accepted and pulled along by people who genuinely want to see environmental change.”

For about a month this winter, a bright yellow barge floated in the ocean, barely visible off Delaware’s coast and about a mile away from the Indian River Lifesaving Station in Rehoboth Beach.

Through wind, waves and freezing temperatures, the 140-foot-long prototype gently rolled with the waves like an elegant version of the worm.

As the segmented, 200-ton steel barge played a game of give and take with the tides, it absorbed the ocean’s energy to operate a filtration system capable of removing the salt from seawater to produce up more than 100,000 gallons per day of fresh water.

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'How much good we could do'

The articulating wave energy conversion system, or AWECS, is the first of its kind to be individually permitted in the United States, Murtha said, but the idea for a device that could source the ocean’s water supply and energy to provide potable water is decades in the making.

U.S. Naval Academy Professor Emeritus Michael McCormick said he discussed the idea in 1981 with his late colleague Peter McCabe of Ireland. Initially the idea was to design a system that could harness wave energy for electric production, but McCormick suggested focusing on producing potable water instead.

“Then he and I started talking about all of the possible good it can do throughout the world,” said McCormick, a world renowned ocean engineer now working for Murtech. “It wasn’t how much we could make, it was how much good we could do throughout the world.”

That same year, McCormick met Murtha, who was a Naval Academy student and later based his master’s thesis on the idea. But it took decades before Murtha would found the marine contracting company and secure steady revenue from government contracts building everything from large docks in Ocean City to offering logistics support for the Department of Defense.

Until now, Murtech has kept quiet about its efforts to offer an all-in-one solution to the demands for an efficient source of fresh drinking water for those in need — whether that be places hit hard by tropical storms or coastal towns where saltwater intrusion is hurting drinking water supplies.

“There always has been a need and the original market that we looked at was the over 100,000 inhabited islands in the world, most of which simply rely on rain and if it doesn’t rain, they don’t have potable water,” McCormick said.

The system is completely made in the United States, as well, with parts and labor coming exclusively from Delaware and Maryland.

“It was built right here, but we weren’t advertising it,” said Charles Dolbey, vice president of Murtech’s marine division. “We’ve been silently employing a pretty impressive workforce putting it together.”

'Blue collar stuff this country was built on'

In early February, the barge sat along Murtech’s dock in Salisbury, where engineers will evaluate how well the mechanical equipment on the system fared during its 45 days at sea. In a few months, she will be deployed again off Delaware’s coast for another round of testing.

When ocean temperatures finally warm up, Murtha said it will be time to test the efficiency of the reverse osmosis desalination process, which uses membranes to remove the salt from the water. He estimated this version of the AWECS will produce 125,000 to 150,000 gallons of freshwater per day. Larger systems in different environments would have varying capabilities depending on size and wave action.

Murtech engineers said they have no doubt the system will do what it was designed to do — they just need to smooth out any kinks and get a good handle on what parts of the system will need regular maintenance.

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Later this summer, Murtech expects it will be ready for a second prototype for beta testing. Four municipalities have already signed memorandums of understanding with the company, Murtha said, although he declined to reveal what towns are interested in getting their drinking water from the Atlantic Ocean.

“You have to take the risk to build the unit and put it out there — and it either works or it doesn’t work,” Dolbey said. “Fortunately, it’s working. It’s the integration and tweaking of all the other pieces at this point.”

Murtech also has permits from state and federal agencies to build a pipeline from the prototype off the Indian River Inlet to land, which would be one way of delivering the water to communities. Murtha said other options could be using a dredge-like pipe on the ocean floor from the barge to land, or transporting water to a storage tank on another barge.

Once the system is ready for market, Murtha said the company will design and deploy AWECS where needed or requested and charge customers much like any other water supply service. He said the goal is to keep rates competitive with traditional water bills.

“Our push is to be commercialized, and we really have to beat the cost,” Murtha said, adding that the prototype has no support from federal subsidies or investors. The former Marine declined to say how much Murtech has spent on developing and testing the system.

Unlike other alternative energy sources such as wind and solar, the AWECS system relies on environmental factors that are relatively static — while the wind may not blow or the sun may not shine, tide cycles always come every six hours regardless of how calm the ocean may appear.

But the purpose of this prototype is not to produce energy for the grid, although the self-sufficient system will mean less demand on local electric grids where it is used.

Wave energy conversion has been extensively studied as an alternative energy source for about 15 years, but has not taken off stateside, said Jeremy Firestone, director of the University of Delaware’s Center for Carbon-free Power Integration.

“The resources, in a sense, are everywhere in the ocean, but the economically extractable wave power is much more localized,” he said. “And in the U.S., there hasn’t really been the necessary federal government financial support.”

If it’s successful, AWECS not only could provide freshwater to places in dire need, but could also spur a new engineering-based workforce. Murtha said the prototype deployed off Delaware’s coast required 10 welders working for nine months in production. Deploying these systems also means pump systems will have to be built, and additional maintenance teams needed to run the equipment.

“This isn’t building iPhones and other electronics,” Murtha said. “This is hardcore welding and engineering — blue collar stuff this country was built on. People may look back and say, ‘You fool, you should have gotten the money.’ But this is something we believed in.”

Contact reporter Maddy Lauria at (302) 345-0608, mlauria@delawareonline.com or on Twitter @MaddyinMilford.