NASA Technology for Water Comes Clean
echnology that made drinking water possible
for NASA Apollo space mission astronauts and yielded numerous water filtration
products for down-to-earth water consumers, has been commercialized again to
provide a cost-effective means for cleaning cooling water without using biocides
and adding significant potential economic value.
Natural Water Technologies, Inc., Atlanta, Georgia; the PMG Manufacturing Group, Wheeling, West Virginia; and the National Technology Transfer Center partnered to reengineer NASA's copper-silver ionizer, a technology developed at Johnson Space Center, to create a new inexpensive, chemical-free, water cleaning product called BIO-CLEAR™.
Traditionally, cooling water treated by chemical means requires expensive, toxic compounds and close monitoring of the cleaning process to ensure employee safety.
The BIO-CLEAR™ system, a mechanical water cleaning system device, cleans water supplies without chemicals in process plants such as steel mills, paper mills and chemical mills.
The average BIO-CLEAR™ system used for industrial cleaning costs $20,000 and provides a typical two-year return on investment. It has resulted in six immediate new jobs with the possibility of 30–50 jobs in three to five years; $500,000 in new business in one year; potential for $15–$20 million in increased revenues; and potential wide use in new housing developments, small community drinking water processes, third world communities and isolated areas.
BIO-CLEAR™ eliminates downtime associated with most chemical-based water cleaning systems by treating the total volume of water from an average source every six hours, at a processing rate of 25 gallons per minute. This self-cleaning system is set up to clean on a 24-hour cycle, an advantage over most 36–48 hour systems.
BIO-CLEAR™'s innovative three-phase process can be set up and monitored by a single operator. The stages include an advanced filter system, followed by a patented magnetic media for bacteria removal and then exposing the water to a high intensity UV light source for immediate and optimum kill rates for bacteria.
Currently, BIO-CLEAR™ technology is breaking into the industrial communities and is anticipated to expand domestically and internationally in commercial water cooling towers; potable water for hospitals, hotels and municipalities; and individual or residential use for home and spas.
For more information, about BIO-CLEAR™, please contact Yurij Wowczuk
at the National Technology Transfer Center.
Call (304) 243-3466,
E-mail ywowczuk@nttc.edu
or Natural Water Technologies, Inc., 6635 Brandon Mill Road, Atlanta, GA 30328.
Call (404) 303-0068.
Please mention you read about it in Innovation.
Knee Brace Commercialized
n update to a promising technology first introduced in the January/February '97
issue of Innovation, the Selectively Lockable Knee Brace is on its way to being
commercialized—it has been licensed. This innovative knee brace facilitates faster, less painful rehabilitation of knee problems and muscle weakness as high as the thigh, allowing freer knee movement.
Horton's Orthotic Lab, Inc., of Little Rock, Arkansas, has signed a licensing agreement with NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the device that offers support to the leg while allowing knee function to the recovering knee injury or surgery patient who may need to use the knee while, at the same time, can't carry full weight on the knee, according to the rocket engineers and/or inventors.
Michael Shadoan, Neill Myers, and co-inventors John Forbes, Kevin Baker and Darron Rice worked for three years to develop the prototype, designed as a spin-off of space propulsion system mechanisms and materials.
Knee braces currently on the market lock the knee in a rigid, straight-leg position, while the new brace design ''works by allowing the knee to bend when weight is not on the heel," said Myers. ''Once weight is placed on the heel, the knee brace locks into position."
The upper part of the brace attaches around the thigh with the lower part secured by a stirrup around the shoe.
For more information about the product, contact Michael Shadoan
at Marshall Space Flight Center.
Call (205) 544-5276, E-mail michael.shadoan@msfc.nasa.gov,
or contact Tony Miller of Horton's Orthotic Lab
Call (501) 663-2968, E-mail TMiller@Hortonsoandp.com
Please mention that you read about it in Innovation.
