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MECC, the Marine Energy Collegiate Competition, is a wave-energy design and business challenge sponsored by the Department of Energy. The team is comprised of three subteams- Hydrodynamics, Power-take-off, and Desalination. These three interdisciplinary capstone teams comprise Valley Wave Energy, a company striving to solve global access to clean water.
Valley Wave Energy is developing a point absorber wave energy converter (WEC), combined with reverse osmosis (RO) desalination system that will generate power to serve onshore desalination for the production of freshwater. This system is called ORWEC and is founded on a simple principle: renewable marine energy, applied with desalination, will alleviate global freshwater scarcity. Valley Wave Energy will target isolated communities, disaster recovery, and disaster preparedness. The device can be shipped in a single shipping container, and the WEC itself is moored less than a mile offshore using a common Munson-style boat. The design allows the WEC to be deployed and begin seawater desalination within days of a natural disaster. Additionally, since our design relies on electrically powered reverse osmosis, the ORWEC can avoid the massive fluid losses endemic to bringing fresh water back to shore for pressure-based reverse osmosis.
Valley Wave Energy can offer an unprecedented amount of versatility and customizability to suit the needs of the customer, with multiple units being able to work asynchronously to provide the customer with variable amounts of power, water, or a hybridized combination of both. Valley Wave Energy is committed to bettering the lives of those facing water scarcity. We feel that a sustainable and robust solution through ORWEC will drive a significant demand, allowing us to anticipate that ORWEC will succeed in a competitive market as an efficient and cost effective source of fresh water and power.
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