Warfighter Water Supplies Via Graphene
Water is a critical resource for every person, but especially so for those in military operations — from forward-operating bases in arid deserts, to unexpected deployments in remote locations. Researchers at the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center are stepping up to meet this moment with a game-changing solution, graphene. Watch this video to see how they’re using this advanced material.
Transcript
00:00:04 [Applause] Water is a critical resource for almost every military operation. From forward operating bases in arid deserts to unexpected deployments in remote locations. Ensuring clean, safe water can spell the difference between success and failure. And sometimes it comes with
00:00:30 its own set of challenges for the war fighter. Researchers at the US Army Engineer Research and Development Center or Eric are stepping up to meet the moment with a game-changing solution, graphing. If you are a soldier deployed out in the field and you have, you know, this one lake source that you don't know if there's a contaminant or not. If we can have graphine something that is
00:00:54 easily deployable in a small system, you can have that as a stop gap um after your other water treatment systems to know that hey, if there's something in here that my traditional uh water treatment systems are not equipped to handle, I have this extra safety barrier that I can put um after my water treatment small in the field where I'm deployed. And so you think about your
00:01:18 footprint, right? Logistics, things are heavy. you can move things around and you might not have infrastructure. So what we're looking at is like decentralized and distributed systems as like we don't have the centralized infrastructure to tap in. You might not have the electricity, you might not have you know um the equipment to move things. So how can we make things
00:01:35 modular, smaller and still perform at the level we need them to and I think that's what going to be the game changer for us. So far the data on graphine performance has been very promising. We found that it's faster than any other absorbance that we have been able to test and in most cases it has the higher capacity. So that means that we can use less graphine to absorb the same amount
00:01:57 of chemical warfare agents than we could for any other absorbent. Beyond cost savings, graphine systems also come with tactical advantages for the war fighter. If you can put these in smaller mobile containers, you can get into places that are currently inaccessible for treatment of these chemical warfare agents. For the army, every pound counts and every watt of energy saved matters. By
00:02:24 shrinking water treatment into lighter modular systems, graphine is proving to be a logistical force multiplier, empowering troops to operate faster and more efficiently. Beyond the battlefield, Verdict's dualuse technology extends across both civil works and military mission spaces, helping to combat harmful algo blooms in inland lakes,
00:02:48 supporting communities during natural disasters, focusing on water security so that we always have a supply for our people, our war fighter, our civilians within the United States.