Waves to Water Prize ADAPT Stage Winners: Team Water Bros (Text Version)

This is a text version of the video Waves to Water Prize ADAPT Stage Winners: Team Water Bros.

During the ADAPT Stage, we had kind of a two-prong approach of the main things that we ended up changing based on our refined simulation model.

First, to maximize the amount of buoyant force that we were able to fit in the predetermined size shipping container in a preassembled fashion, which is important to our design, we squared our circle and turned our buoy into a square design with a linear channel underneath the bottom and two station keeping fins as devices that just slide on upon arrival at the deployment site. Another thing we did was not as much of a change of design but a very specific selection of components. Our component selection has geared our device towards being something that any local mechanic, or someone with a decent level of trade skill knowledge and access to automotive parts or standard machinery parts, could be able to make field repairs. That way we can ensure the longevity of our device, because a wave-powered desalination system that's broken does no one any good.

We have already built and deployed our first prototype A. It is a one-third-scale design. It has already been deployed off the coast of North Carolina, and we've had an outstanding response from the local community. The coastal community of North Carolina has provided overwhelming support for the project.

Putting our hands on the hardware and taking all of these conceptual designs and starting to integrate them together into a device that is actually going to perform its design function has been incredibly rewarding. Through the program, we were also able to hire an undergraduate mechanical engineering student from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and a STEM scholar high school student, so we were able to diversify our team and help engage our local community here at Charlotte in order to bring more hands onto the project and continue to grow the WATER BROS brand.

As one of the smaller teams, the ADAPT Stage winnings have been instrumental to the position that we are now in. We have worked very well with our sponsors and our local community to acquire an outstanding lab space at the Industrial Solutions Laboratory at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte at a rate that we were able to afford because of the winnings. These winnings have allowed us to build our first, and now we've completed our second, prototype that is getting deployed next week, and then we'll be traveling to the University of New Hampshire with the TEAMER program to test in a wave tank. The winnings through the ADPAT Stage will provide the team the ability to travel to New Hampshire to complete that TEAMER sponsored testing. So, overall it's been a wonderful experience working with Waves to Water, Cadadine, Engineering for Change, NREL, and Department of Energy, and we can't thank you guys enough.