Water scarcity is among the greatest challenges of the 21ST century

Oneka technologies has an ambitious mission: making the oceans a sustainable and affordable source of freshwater. Oneka technologies is combining the ocean's seawater with its own wave energy to provide freshwater to coastal and vulnerable populations and industries without compromising the environment. Our solution increases resilience to climate change while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and water costs. Oneka desalination buoys have versatile applications and can provide fresh water to a variety of entities located in coastal regions. Oneka has demonstrated the capacity of its wave powered desalination systems to produce and deliver fresh water to shore. While the system achieves a satisfactory level of performance, ensuring long term profitability and competitiveness of the system involves continuously improving system reliability and maintenance costs. Oneka's current offshore desalination plants are very similar to traditional plants onshore but are adapted for non-continuous flow, and with oneka being the leader in a new industry at the intersection of the water ocean wave energy sectors, harvesting of wave energy to desalinate water requires the development and optimization of new components and operational processes. The project described here will focus on optimizing the design of certain components to enhance reliability in the transient regime and reduce preventive and reactive maintenance costs. The critical success factors integrated into the project plan include: the proper analysis of the primary contributors to reliability metrics, as well as the potential for innovation and improvements within each one, the development of appropriate prototypes to represent the innovative concept, simulation and laboratory testing to validate the design, and finally physical testing on an appropriate platform. The formal objectives of the proposed project are to develop an improved intake system that extends intervals between cleaning operations, optimize the system to preserve and extend the life of RO membranes, and review and potentially replace existing commercially available valves and system components with alternatives that extend maintenance intervals.